Aftermath
by Jennifer Wand
Summary: Following a message intended only for her, Samus sets out to expose corruption in the Galactic Federation. Written because Samus deserves a personality and a purpose, not just a power suit.
1. Chapter 1: Facade

I am trying not to look back. 

Behind me, there is the sound of crumbling stone and steel, and the crash of stalactites of that strange mold that an infestation leaves behind. Strange how those creatures can turn a ship into a subterranean cave. Gleaming gray to ancient, vivid green. Everything they touch decomposes and dies, like they're turning the hands of time.

I mustn't look back. My ship blinks invitingly. Just a few more paces and I'll be aboard, and I'll be flying away from this place, where only death reigns now. Ignore the rumbling... ignore the cries of the small creatures as they die. You need not pity them. They're just creatures. It's not his scream. He'd never scream.

Oh, God, I'm sorry.

Suddenly I can't breathe and the helmet has to come off. My hair is long and it flaps around me in the dusty air. I can taste it. Dust and sweat and oil. I feel my lips move.

"I'm sorry..."

I feel my head start to turn. It's all I can do. Tears blink away the dust in my eyes. I see the entrance, half-blocked by rubble, come into view. I shouldn't be looking back. Another explosion thunders across the terrain and the entrance is obscured by a boulder. An enormous boulder, half a man's height, like the final blow to my hopes.

Hopes? What was I expecting, anyway? Did I really think I'd see him come crawling out at the last minute? You're a foolish girl, Samus. He didn't make it and he won't come back. You can wish as hard as you like, but it'll never happen. Even Adam isn't that strong.

I whisper through the dust and the tears. "I'm so sorry."

And then there is a hand on the boulder.

And he's pushing it away, and the weathered face comes into view, bloodied and scraped but undoubtedly his. And his dark eyes have a smile in them. I can't even hear my own scream, can't even feel my body fly across the terrain. I only know I've moved at all when my armor thumps loudly against his.

His voice is the scraping voice of age and exhaustion and it's beautiful. "What's wrong, lady?" he laughs, though I can hear the pain thick in his throat. "Did you really think I'd let you leave without me?" I shake my head violently into his chest. The plates of metal shielding him are cracked and worn and hot with the fires approaching us. I can't stop my tears. They hiss on the metal like angry snakes. I feel as though my face is going to melt into him, and I lean further, ready to drown in relief and

"...ADAM!"

Silence.

I'm sitting straight up in bed, sweat drenching the sheets. The air conditioning must be broken. It's horrendously hot in here. Through the portal I can see stars, distant and shining the clear, cold shine of stars from space. I feel a wave of nausea and lean my forehead onto an upturned palm.

Was there ever really a time I thought of myself as a foolish girl?

Reality slows its dizzying spin and comes to rest, heavily, on my back. That dream happenedages ago. Or, more precisely, it didn't happen ages ago. Adam never crawled out from that furnace of a planet. The way it really happened, I whispered "I'm sorry," went to my ship, and left him behind. Left him to burn.

It's just that occasionally I feel it's the other way around.

---

Aftermath

Because Samus deserves a personality and a purpose.

Chapter I: Facade

-----

The ship I ride now is oblong, sleek, and silver, like a great fish. Except for the buggy cooling system, it's the best technology money can buy. That's because it's a Galaxy Federation ship. The thought of that makes me feel sick sometimes. But the orange ship I've piloted so many years isn't an option right now. It may be faster, smarter, stronger. But it's Samus Aran's starship. And right now, I'm not Samus Aran.

My ship is well-hidden. I know it'll come in handy eventually, but I could never get this close without letting it disappear for now. It's in the bowels of a certain asteroid I happen to know has a large, hidden crater. We've been there before, the ship and I. As for my suit, it's well-hidden too, but I keep it slightly closer to home. One of the nice things about a suit with morph ball capabilities - it's easy to carry.

I miss the feel of the suit. It was cool and warm all at once, and the hollow sound of my breath in the helmet was a rhythm I lived by. That dizzying detachment from my physical body I felt when I morphed, the release of the speed booster as I broke the threshhold and everything slowed down around me, the feeling that my hand itself had become a weapon as the beam built up its charge.... these are sensations one doesn't easily forget. And as freed as my skin feels bared against the elements, I am still more weighed down by the regulation firearms at my waist than I ever was in the Chozo suit.

Yes, I am a Federation officer now. I wear the uniform, I carry the weapons, and I ride the ship. There's even a mild green GF stitched at my shoulder. It was easy to get here. It was a simple bit of hacking to enter the name "Ran" into the database, to forge prior experience and even recommendations. The back door they left open when they downloaded that computerized CO to my ship proved quite useful.

And it's quite remarkable how easily people will "remember" you with a few words and some slight suggestions. I went into parties and gatherings like I went into battle - armed with all my data. I was shocked they didn't remember me from the battle at UN-934, or the training session we'd attended back in Federation Academy class F. Didn't they remember how hot it was that day, and by the way I have a review coming up, if anyone should ask you about my performance there please do be favorable. I'm really hoping to be assigned to BSL-2.

Not all fancy footwork requires a speed booster, after all.

So here I am, aboard this strange silverfish, headed for Biologic's new research station. They've rebuilt in the wake of their terrible loss following the infestation that "killed" Samus Aran along with their precious research specimens. I've heard a few disquieting rumors that bore investigating under the guise of a senior security officer training a new recruit, so I finessed my way into the job.

I just realized I haven't mentioned Ethan yet.

Ethan is barely out of his teens, slight, with sandy hair and a grin so wide it's hard to believe he'll ever be able to muster up enough of an authoritative air to be a decent officer. But he's pleasant, impressionable, and easily swayed. I can hardly think of a better companion for a journey such as this. In fact, there's only one problem with Ethan. But it's a big one.

"Do you think she'll be up there?" he said abruptly one shift, as we were moving some cumbersome crates of energy cores from the hold to the engine room. Somewhat hypnotized by the humming of the purple globes in the canisters, I made a noncommittal noise and shook my head.

"Sorry," I said, "where?"

"At BSL-2," Ethan answered. "Hiding in one of their crates. Curled up in a ball, just watching. Waiting to blast them all away." He jabbed with his arm, nearly sending energy cores flying across the room.

I snapped at him. "Focus, Ethan, focus!"

"I don't believe she's dead. Do you? There was probably a Space Pirate infestation, and she got away just in time. Not before killing half of them, of course."

Setting down my crate, I finally faced him. "Just who are you talking about?"

"Samus Aran, of course!"

If I'd still been holding the crate, it would have crashed to the floor at that moment. Biting back my surprise, I forced myself to breathe. "The bounty hunter?" I hoped my voice sounded as casual as I meant it to.

"Not just a bounty hunter," he retorted. "THE bounty hunter!"

Ethan's enthusiasm gave me room to calm my nerves. My reply was flat. "That's what I said. The bounty hunter."

"You've been in this business for a while, haven't you, Chief? Have you ever met her?" Now that the initial shock had worn off, I could afford to be amused. I shrugged my shoulders and gave him a half-smile. In response, a small explosion of excitement built up behind his face. "You have, haven't you?" he finally burst out. "Is it true what they say about her? That she can kill a Space Pirate just by touching it? That she NEVER takes her suit off? Even when she..." He stopped and blushed. For the first time I found myself wondering if I was the subject of Galaxy Federation locker-room talk.

From that moment on, Ethan became prone to fits of speculation. "Where do you suppose she got that suit, anyway?" he'd say at mealtime. My thoughts would flicker to the past and I'd lose my appetite. At another point, he'd start raving about "how cool it must be to just curl up into that little-bitty ball and roll around like a watermelon!" It was cute, but slightly unnerving. I was trying to keep my identity under wraps; it didn't help to have someone talking about me day in and day out.

It was when he theorized about what had happened at BSL that I felt the most anxious. I didn't particularly want to think about it, especially when he started positing theories about how the organisms on board must have sent the satellite plummeting toward its destruction. Guilt would sting me then, like an angry war wasp, and I'd feel the need to retreat. It felt so much like a return to another hazy night, when I'd let another world burn, with another Adam's voice ringing in my ears.

Adam had faded from the computer minutes after I escaped. Whether his personality was tied to some aspect of the lab, or he was a program whose time had run out, I didn't know. Once the mystery of my ship's launch had been cleared, and I had the space to begin worrying about the consequences of my actions, the computer had reassured me. "Someone will understand," it had said. "Someone must."

For a moment, I had actually thought Adam was advising me to tell the truth: to go to Federation headquarters and admit I had effectively destroyed Biologic. But then reality set in. If that had been the case, why had the computer initially advised me to allow the Federation access? It was almost as if it had paused to think before realizing there was another way. But computers don't need time to think, and usually, neither did Adam. He was trying to tell me something.

Those final words were the last the computer spoke in Adam's voice, but they were enough to give me my answer.

Adam's morality was narrow and unflinching. But his methods of teaching were as subtle as they come. At times, we'd engage in extended role-plays... he'd outline the scenario, then take on the persona of either a partner or an enemy. Some would be straightforward, but more often than not, there was a subterfuge behind the play.

On one occasion, he'd laid out the scene of a politician being held hostage in an armory by political rivals gone wrong. Once I'd navigated the physical aspect of the role play and gotten to the room he was being held unnoticed, Adam took on the role of the politician. "These men hold power," he'd warned me in a voice very unlike his own. "This situation can't be solved by blasting our way out."

"What are you talking about?" I hissed at him. "These guys are killers! Have you forgotten what they did to your partner?"

"Don't you understand?" he said. Adam's voice was convincingly desperate -- even in the dim light of the training hall, I could almost see a small, round man gazing up at me with beady, panicked eyes. "If we take action like this, there will be an inquiry... people will regard our party as ruthless... they'll question the necessity for such action..."

"Don't be stupid!" I snapped. "It's more important to save your life than to avoid some inquiry. You can't be tried if you're dead!"

Adam's politician pondered for a moment. "You're right," he conceded. I stared at him, incredulous for a moment, and he hastened to explain. "Well, you're right! There doesn't seem to be another way out. I'm sure someone will understand."

And so I fired my way through the stronghold, and with a world leader clinging to me, I ran from the wreckage as it burned. And just before leaving to join the guard assembled at the burning site, my new politician friend said to me, "I just want you to know... I really do hope someone will understand what you've done."

Adam turned up the lights in the hall and I knew I'd made a mistake.

Politician gone, Adam stood straight up, his arms folded, facing me. "Shortly thereafter, the destruction of the armory is called into question," he said matter-of-factly. The hall resonated with his harsh tone, and I felt his echoes pierce me. "You're court-martialed for reckless use of your badge and are asked to recount your motives for torching the compound."

Nervously, I protested. "I did it for his sake."

Adam scowled at me. "Your friend testifies at the hearing that you acted against his advice and that he would never have sanctioned such a lawless display. You're given eight decacycles in prison and he is elected Prime Minister."

"What the..!?" I started to protest.

He slammed his hand against the wall. "You're naive!" he bellowed, and I shrank in silence - only Adam could ever make me cower like that. "He was counting on you to destroy his rivals and take the fall for him! Never trust someone who changes his mind and then tells you someone will understand, lady! Someone WON'T understand!"

I swallowed hard. It felt as if I'd been slapped across the face.

Adam sighed then, and gazed listlessly off at some point behind me. "The world is ugly," he said pensively. "It gets uglier the more you know. When something is inconsistent, question it. Even if it comes from the highest authority."

"So I should have been suspicious when he did that."

He nodded. "You may have made the same decision, but you would have had the question."

"And when the time came, I would have known to deny any allegiance and seek out the truth on my own," I pondered.

"That's right." He walked up to me. "Always count on yourself when the lines begin to blur, lady. If you're strong enough and you're smart enough, you can always strike out on your own."

And then, something unprecedented happened. He touched my face. "Be strong enough," he said. "And for God's sake, lady, be smart enough."

Wearily, he turned and walked away.

I wasn't in the academy for very long after that. The world shifted around me and the Federation suddenly seemed so much less appealing. A bounty hunter made a better living than a civil servant anyway, and I wasn't eager to share the secrets of my past with the authorities. But those are superficial reasons. The true reasons I gave up on being a Federation officer run through bloodier waters.

But now here I was, back where I'd started. Well, not quite where I'd started: I was in Adam's shoes now, a mentor to a young cadet. Ethan is in my position now, and like I had been, he is young, idealistic, enthusiastic, and very talented. So much so that it frightens me a little. What if he sees too much? What if he gets himself into a situation he can't handle?

What if I can't handle it, either?

But I'm no longer the girl who froze up when a man changed his mind. I've seen firsthand the deadly creatures that inhabit this world of ours, the horrors you can see with your eyes and the ones that strike at your heart. I've learned that a creature born only to kill can long for a mother, and that an organization sworn to protect the universe can selfishly put it at risk. There are grey areas in this world, and inconsistencies, and things and people that cannot be trusted.

I don't know if I'm strong enough or smart enough. But I do know that the lines are more blurred than they've ever been. So for better or for worse, I'm out on my own, and I won't stop until I find the truth.

-to be continued-

-


	2. Chapter 2: Questions

Aftermath

Because Samus deserves a personality and a purpose.  
By Jennifer Wand

* * *

Chapter 2: Questions

* * *

We arrived at BSL-2 and were ushered into the station by grinning, bespectacled scientists who fell all over themselves in an effort to greet us in the most hospitable manner possible. I could almost see "grant money" written across the panes of their horn-rimmed glasses. Ethan and I hefted our cargo from the storage bays with a series of grunts, and we were shown into the main atrium.

They'd built this station much more splendidly than its brother -- perhaps the insurance money from losing the first Biologic research station had funded this one. The atrium had been hidden from our eyes as we docked, but we could see now it encompassed the height of the entire station. Tall, wide windows arched over and around us, rich green vines climbing along the edges of each pane. Rows and rows of balconies spread out beneath us, wider as they got lower, like tiers of a strange metallic rice field. At our level, about halfway up, there were brightly colored flowers dotting the walkways; beneath, where it was dimmer, I could see the faint glow of saturnine mushrooms. I'd never quite appreciated how large the Biologic research facility was. When I think about it, the original satellite must have been the size of a small city, with its six extensive sectors. But it wasn't until now that I realized the sheer enormity of it. There must have been fifty levels of balconies and walkways.

From a dimly lit doorway in the shadows walked in a tall, lean man in a white lab coat. I realized as he stepped into the light that he was one of the Hojarr race of hybrid-humans. I'd seen many types of creatures without flinching, but for some reason, the Hojarr features always made me uncomfortable, with their beady eyes that peered out from beneath the slight tufts of hair on their brow. Maybe it was the blood of birds within me that instinctively feared at the sight of dogs, but I always felt as though I was being hunted. I struggled not to avert my eyes.

"Welcome to BSL2," he began in a deep rumble. "I'm Parr Jak, lead scientist here. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to come directly to me." The shaggy hair on the side of his face bounced slightly as he drew a clipboard from under his arm and scanned it. "Let's see, you must be Officer Ran Meridian." His eyes, round as sea-washed pebbles, lingered on me for a moment before returning to his clipboard. "And Cadet Ethan Scott."

"At your service, sir!" Ethan sprang into a salute. I suppressed a smile.

"I'm sure you are," rejoined Parr. He looked at me again, probing to see if I would share a knowing look. My eyes refused, and he faltered briefly, the light fading from his smile. He ran a hand through his unkempt hair, raised his eyebrows, and let out a sigh. It was just as well. I'd rather he didn't smile and bare those slightly-too-sharp teeth.

I stepped forward and introduced us formally. It never failed to amuse me to hear my assumed name pass my lips. Ran, of course, was merely an abbreviation of my last name; but the surname I'd chosen brought with it a wealth of memories.

When I returned to Zebes to fight the space pirates again, I was horrified to see how efficiently they had recreated those halls and passageways I'd once destroyed. Even worse, they had expanded. The caverns of their domain were just like before, only bigger, more splendid, sprawling across the expanse of Zebes' underworld. There was even a new research area, unlike anything I'd seen before. The mapping device called it Maridia.

Maridia stunned me from the moment I set foot in the first of its halls. Here were the trees and clinging vines, the pools and whispering breezes of my youth. It was a recreation of Zebes' temperate zone, as it had been before this scourge had wiped it out. I grew up here, with birds and fish as my playmates, learning how the innovation of the mind could enhance, not exploit, the balances of nature. And it was deep in the heart of Maridia that I discovered the hidden technology that allowed me to do what I'd never done before: to soar, like my adopted race of Chozo, to the heights of the sky.

It was out of reverence for that place, and as a reminder that beauty could be found in the midst of horror, that I chose my name. I was a citizen of the land of paradox. I was a Meridian.

When the introductions and formalities were done, Parr escorted us to the elevators for a brief tour of the station. BSL-2 was divided into sectors, much as its predecessor had been. This time, however, they were interspersed with the scientists' living quarters and science labs, assumedly to keep a closer watch on the goings-on in the research areas. I was stunned at the tameness of the creatures being kept for observation. Nothing more dangerous than a digger in the temperate and tropical zones we were guided through. The superheated and supercooled sections we couldn't see firsthand, but we passed along a bank of monitor screens in which I could see magma pools and ice-coated stones. The nocturnal section on the lower decks was so dark, only a few faint glows of phosphorescent creatures could convince our eyes there was anything there at all. Along the way, we caught glimpses of the scientists' lives on and off the clock: a dark-skinned woman measuring what looked like urine samples (and wrinkling her nose as she did); two younger scientists engaged in a virtuospar match; a dirty-faced technician restocking a relaxation chair with energy cores.

Finally, we were shown to our rooms, told we could rest for the remainder of the shift. In the elevator on the way up, Ethan burst out, "So, do you do any top-secret research here?" I must have looked horrified, because Parr burst out laughing.

"I could tell you," he said in a serious tone, "but then she'd have to kill you." He thrust a hairy thumb in my direction and grinned. I rolled my eyes.

Late in the shift, when the lights were low for sleeping, I crept out to the atrium again and sat, curled up against the rail. It felt like a place I'd been before, and the plants smelled clean and fresh. The vines against the windowpanes whispered to me of secrets I hadn't heard since childhood, and when I closed my eyes, I felt I could hear the beating of wings.

* * *

Old Bird had been my surrogate father, my mentor, my admiring audience. At every new move I made, every form I mastered, he had applauded, his beak twitching amusedly. I suppose it was partly in astonishment that a human, even one so small as I, could muster the strength to kick off from the ground and tumble through the air in a somersault, landing securely on a limb above. But he always made me feel as though my accomplishments were due to my brilliance, not my species. "Samus, you're a wonder!" he'd say in his weathered, cracking voice. I'd feel a swelling of pride and run off to see what else I could learn that would draw praise from him once more.

My favorite, though, had been when he'd call me "Hatchling." It made me feel as though I really were one of them... that I'd broken free from an egg as a baby, not been forced out of a human womb. It was so easy to pretend I wasn't human, to push away the memories both sweet and scary and live only in this deep, wild jungle where I was free from pain and remembrance. I had never seen my parents die. I had never felt the rumble of explosions and forced my way out from beneath a pile of limp bodies. I was just another Chozo hatchling.

Living among the Chozo had been like living a lucid dream. There I was, truly moving around them, yet there was a consciousness there that was just out of my reach. The elders would mumble to each other as they walked by in syllables that I could not reproduce, and even when I could interpret the words, they meant nothing to me.

"The wall is crumbling," said a haggard-looking elder, bursting into our home one evening.

"Yes," replied Old Bird. "The Poison has already reached our brothers."

"Will we see their fate, then, with our eyes?" our visitor pressed. "Will you wait until then to give her the Gift?" I could feel his eyes on me, and turned away, pretending not to hear. Stubbornly I stared at the puzzle I'd been playing with, refusing to let him know I'd heard.

"But I fear we may place too much hope on her. She is so young, and no Gift can give her the wisdom we have labored these hundreds of cycles to attain." Old Bird did not glance my way even once. Instead, he stared off to the side, craning his neck as if peering out a faraway window.

"Be that as it may," the elder retorted, "the visions speak truth! Our legacy will survive no other way! Will you gamble our heritage on one human's innocence?"

"She is a Chozo!" It was the angriest I had ever heard him. I shivered and curled up, trying to make my whole body into a tiny, invisible ball.

"Is she? Then prove it, Old Bird! Show us we were right to have faith in her! Or is it your own selfishness that keeps you so resistant?"

Old Bird sighed, a long, resolute sigh I had heard before. It was the sound of his will being broken. "Of course, you're right," he said wearily. "I only wish we had more time."

When the man had gone, Old Bird motioned for me to come near. Wrapping his wings tight about me, he pulled me into his lap. I could feel a hot tear roll across my hair. "You're one of us, Hatchling," he whispered. "You don't need to be anything more than what you are. You're my beautiful, perfect child... just as you are." I didn't understand. I just leaned my head against him and listened to the rhythm of his breathing.

It was a sound I would not hear again.

* * *

Over the next several days, Ethan was more help to me than he knew. He asked all the questions I was careful not to ask, and cheerfully reported everything back to me as though he were obliged to do so. Calmly, I nodded my head and tried to look mildly interested, while secretly devouring every detail of the lab's security system and operational structure. The morsels about Federation-sponsored work were the ones I looked forward to most hungrily. Nothing truly suspicious had come to light, but this _was_, after all, Biologic. If I was patient enough, something would rear its head.

The scientists there took a liking to Ethan, mostly due to his tendency to gape at them admiringly -- it was good for their egos. After a meal, some of the younger technicians on board would often take him aside and try to explain various laws of physics and biology. When Ethan reported back to me, the facts were hopelessly muddled. Still, his stories gave me some insight into the nature of the projects in progress aboard the station. There was some of the basic genetic engineering, adapting a tropical species for temperate, then sub-zero climates; some brainwave pattern recognition; sentience level evaluation -- the usual array. And then there was something I couldn't explain.

"Parr mentioned it to me," chattered Ethan as I sat curled up in the corner of my room, jangling a handful of round stones lazily in one palm. "It has to do with a species they're familiar with and another one they know very little about. In the wild they're predator and prey, but they've figured out a way to augment the genes to reverse it - so the little guy actually hunts the big guy!"

"What good is that?" I asked, watching the curves of the stones as they caught the light.

"I'm not sure. I think they're trying to strike a balance so the two can coexist." This seemed strange to me. The genetic experiments were done on grant money, so the researchers usually had to specify a very specific, human-centered purpose if they wanted funding. But I couldn't divine what the benefits were of disrupting the food chain in this way. My mental red flag rose to half-mast.

"Parr says he and his colleagues are all tied up in determining this one value," Ethan went on. "They're calling it the X factor."

I sat up straight. The stones scattered on the carpet. "Chief?" said Ethan, alarmed. "You okay?"

The sirens sounding in my brain quieted. "Yeah," I said, passing a hand over my brow. I bent over to pick up the tiny marbles. "It seems like Parr has taken you under his wing, doesn't it?"

"I suppose," Ethan muttered. Inwardly, I berated myself. It wasn't unusual to call an unknown value X, for heaven's sake. Was I going to let my past spook me every time somebody recited the alphabet?

Nevertheless, it didn't end up being a restful night.

* * *

In the waking hours, before the research stations below bustled to life, I stood alone on the high atrium balcony, watching the light of the distant suns rise and fall. I'd forgotten how tedious simple escort duty could be. I was living the life of a security guard -- a mind-numbing enough job on a planet's surface, but even worse up here, where any suspicious elements would be spotted thousands of kilometers away. I wanted to curl up and sleep until the clue I was looking for came knocking. As it was, I was spending my shifts monitoring screens for climate aberrations. The most action I'd seen had been a drunken fight between two researchers. I wasn't sure, but I could have sworn they had been arguing over whose theorem was right.

There was a pleasant aroma at my side suddenly, and I looked down to see a mug of coffee being offered by a furry-knuckled hand. "You look like you need this," Parr said, stepping up to my side.

I shivered. Of all the people I'd known, Parr Jak was the first to be able to approach without my noticing. Rationally, I knew he was a polite, amiable man, and I suppose I should have welcomed his difference from the horde of dry, socially inept scientists Biologic tended to produce. But he continued to make me more nervous than I cared to admit. Something about his looks, or maybe it was the familiar way he spoke to me, as though I was an old friend. The uncomfortable feeling may have even come from knowing that in him, I had to confront my own prejudices.

"I'll bet you're glad you came here now," Parr remarked, sliding his black beads of eyes slowly toward me. "We haven't shown you a very exciting time, have we?"

I continued to stare straight ahead. "It's better that way," I answered bluntly. "No news is good news."

"But you'd like to see, wouldn't you?" A gleam appeared to dance across those eyes. "I bet you are dying to know just what we're up to here. What it is you're protecting."

This hit too close to home. I looked at him warily. "I've seen it." My voice may well have seemed a little too guarded, because he seized on my words.

"No, you haven't. Not the truth."

My eyebrows arched -- it was all I could do not to react more than that. "The truth?" I repeated sardonically, but the question mark, like a persistent bubble, rose at the edge of my tone.

"I can show you," he went on, half-smiling. "Anything you want to see. What about it, Ran?"

And at long last, I got it. The way he said my name was like a beacon of insight. "Parr," I said flatly, "you're hitting on me."

"And you're surprised?" he burst out, nearly laughing. "I'm on a station with four hundred scientists and a thousand species of semi-sapient life. Hell, I can't even tell the difference between the two sometimes. Then on board comes an incredibly beautiful Federation officer and you expect me to do what, exactly?"

I hadn't expected so candid a reaction. It was as much emotion as I'd ever seen from him. I felt an odd combination of exasperation and befuddlement. Not one cell of my body felt any attraction to him, but for the first time, he did seem more human than dog.

And I wasn't unaware of the opportunity, either. I forced myself to smile. "Point taken. So you said I haven't seen the real BSL2?"

* * *

It was down on a lower floor, beneath the supercooled sector. Parr ushered me past a blue-tinted security door into a series of laboratories. Many were lined with specimen tanks bearing species slightly more hostile than I'd seen before -- war wasps, skulterae -- but all heavily sedated and scarcely breathing in their glass prisons.

Finally, we came to a second door, red this time -- the universal color for second-level security. Parr help up his palm, but paused before passing it across the scanner. "I can't promise you'll like this," he said. "But I promise you're in no danger."

I tried hard not to roll my eyes. "That's what I should be promising you."

Without answering, he slowly drew his hand across the panel. The door slid open, and I took in a sharp breath of shock.

Beneath the glass of the sole specimen tank in this room hovered a thin, angled face, one I was more familiar with than I dared admit. The tapering, long limbs were coated with thick, gleaming scales, and faint sparks of electricity traveled between the great pincers of its claws. Its eyes were closed -- those eyes that showed no emotion, but I always felt were hurling hate at me -- and it did not appear to be breathing. One of my hands clutched the doorframe for support.

"A... a space pirate? How did you -- how did you get one?" I looked for a place to rest my eyes other than on the creature, and finally tilted my head to stare at a nonchalant Parr. "Is it dead?"

"You know it's not," Parr said ruefully. "We're scientists. To kill a space pirate, you've got to have a particle cannon, a troop of marines, or Samus Aran on your side." The name rolled off his tongue noncommittally. Apparently I'd become a cliché. "But we did find this one, weakened, on an outpost. It looked like it had been abandoned, and we were able to put it into suspended animation."

"That's not a stable technology!" I gasped, amazed. Visions of Elite pirates breaking out of specimen tanks crowded my thoughts. "What if it breaks free?"

He seemed to think about it for a moment. "Then," he finally said, looking down at me, "I guess you'd have to protect me."

I stared at the creature again, feeling a dull ache grow in the pit of my stomach. It wasn't the pirate's presence here that worried me as much as its purpose. (After all, if worst came to worst, I _was_ the one person on this station, cliché or not, who could kill a space pirate.) What did he think he could do with it? It was being held not in a laboratory, but in a storage tank. It was as if they were waiting to roll it out when the time was right. I had the suspicion there were more pieces to this dangerous little puzzle.

I let Parr lead me away from the room, masking my racing thoughts in a guise of fear. "Why did you show me this?" I stammered when the silence had gone on too long.

He gave me a sidelong glance. "Good question," he said. "Why DID I show you?" He looked for a moment as though he would say more, but then he shook his head. "At the very least, I hope you don't think I meant to upset you."

"You didn't," I lied. He had upset me, but not in the way he thought. "You'd think the Federation would have told me the nature of your research before I was assigned, though."

"I guess your clearance level wasn't sufficient," Parr shrugged. Inwardly, I smirked. So the Federation DID have knowledge of this after all. Thank you, Parr!

As we passed back through the maze of secured laboratories, I scanned the layout of the place, making mental notes of what doors I had and hadn't opened. A writing-board hanging on the far wall of a room caught my attention, and I stopped to commit it to memory. It was divided by a long vertical line into two sections, one labeled "X" and the other "M," with vaguely familiar equations crowding each side and glowing arrows of fluorescent colors crossing over the boundary to relate equivalent concepts. Something about the nature of the equations nagged at me, but it was a problem I'd have to wait until later to resolve. For now, I had Parr at my side, and he was bound to wonder what had stopped me in my tracks. Reluctantly, I continued on my way.

Through the day, I repeated the equations I'd seen in my head, over and over like a mantra. They still held no significance for me, but nevertheless I knew I had seen them before. I had to keep them fresh until I had time to write them down and ponder them at length. I couldn't afford to let them become blank question marks in my head. So all through the day I went, muttering my little chant and hoping that recognition would eventually light the ever-darkening cloud of suspicion that those numbers evoked in me.

It was late when I finished. One of the researchers, a dumpy little woman with spectacles and about fifty grandchildren, had run into some trouble in the habitats involving an unfortunate combination of a sap sac and a cluster of novae she was trying to harvest for her phosphorescence trials. I'd cleared away the mess and, far past the sleeping hour, finally herded enough novae into the specimen tank. She went into a small fit at how good I was with the animals. This made me chuckle -- my last encounter with novae had involved me somersaulting into a cluster and reducing it to atoms. All in all, nearly half my sleeping hours had been wasted by the time I returned to my room.

Finally removed from the madness of the day, I took a writing-pad from the table and curled up in my favorite position in the corner of the room. I had always been partial to nooks and crannies -- places I could hide, places I could discover and claim all my own. When I was a child, I looked up in envy as my playmates learned to soar the sky. But I had an agility they didn't, even so, and I could find secret hollows in knotted messes of tree roots, shady caverns beneath waterfalls, tunnels where secrets hid deep within the hills and cliffs of the highlands. I found secret entrances buried deep beneath the earth, places I later learned were the province of the Chozo warriors, those select few who were given the power to change their body's shape. As for me, I simply somersaulted through them.

And when I found the deepest, most secret part, where the world couldn't find me, I just sat -- sometimes thinking, sometimes crying, sometimes simply enjoying the knowledge that I had discovered yet another secret. Even today, I seek out those places where I can be both the intrepid explorer and the baby bird. The Hunter and the Hatchling.

I drew a long line down the center of the pad, watching the glow appear at the end of the stylus and linger like a sleepy firefly. "X" it was, and "M." Slowly, half-asleep already, I started to scratch out the first equation. Yes, I had definitely seen these values before. That symbol was a life-force coefficient -- it appeared in any biological equation by default. And this one was a sentience value, a mathematical evaluation of a being's intelligence and ability to reason. Meanwhile, on the other side, energy transference rates were being calculated.

I stared at the numbers and symbols a long time, the pad glowing faintly in the dark room. From what I could tell, the equations were designed to calculate a rate of energy transference between two beings that would keep them alive, but mutually dependent. But the equations wouldn't balance... one side or the other kept reaching zero. Stifling yawns, I tried several cases, and watched them fail, one by one. The problem, I realized, seemed to be due to an instability in one variable.

My sleepiness fell away and I straightened out. This was the X factor that Ethan had discussed with me -- and this was the part of the secret Parr hadn't showed me. The biologists here were trying to adjust the genetic factors of two creatures to create a symbiosis. And from what I could tell about the energy required for these creatures, the result would be a more intelligent, more dangerous species. BSL2 was, quite literally, trying to create a monster.

This time, I was going to need my suit.

* * *

To be continued.

* * *

Author's notes.

I am reconstructing most of Samus's past from my knowledge of the games. A great amount is liberally played with here. For those of you out there who are compendiums of Metroid trivia, I can only hope that the emotional reality supports the suspension of disbelief enough that you can forgive any continuity errors. Please understand that my visions of the characters, names and places of Samus's life may differ from your own. (I recently saw a picture of Adam from the manga. Um, yuck!) I do hope everything is self-explanatory and that there will be no need for further author's notes.

Thanks for reading.


	3. Chapter 3: Flashback

**Aftermath  
**a Metroid fanfiction by Jennifer Wand

Chapter III: Flashback

"Is it autumn? The trees are red."

I hear the words tumble from my mouth and I can't believe myself. I've seen eleven autumns now, on two planets, and none of them have looked like this. And I've seen fires, enough of them to know this forest is on fire.

We'd heard the roar and seen the great black locusts as they drew ever closer to the treetops. Yet somehow we'd remained frozen, gazing to the skies, until that first lick of flame singed the landscape. Then, like the fire itself, we'd scattered. The women began to scream and the children to wail, and all of a sudden the whole sky seemed red, and I heard myself ask Old Bird it if was autumn.

Old Bird had not moved. I notice that none of the elders have--they are all simply standing, like stone pillars in the panic. Like sundials, all pointed toward the light, shadows parallel. I know the foolishness of the question, and it takes all I have to get the words out of my throat, but somehow I'm afraid that if I don't make Old Bird move soon, he'll turn to stone.

Finally, he shakes himself and looks down at me. There's a sadness in his eyes, but there always is. I thought it was simply that he is old and has seen so much, but now it's like that sadness had been sleeping before and is now awake. I'm really scared.

"No, Hatchling," he says. "It isn't autumn. Come."

And he leads me away through the grove. I look back to see if the other elders have moved too. The clearing is empty now, but for the stonelike elders. They have budged from their perches, their talons still firmly gripping the earth. But every last one of them has turned his head to stare at me as I'm pulled away.

The forest is getting hotter... "It's hot," I say. "It's hot, Old B..."

* * *

Then, there is cold on my forehead and my eyes fly open. Hovering above me is a lean woman with spectacles and a pockmarked face. She's put an ice pack above my eyes and looks startled at how fast I've woken up. Slowly, I become aware of pain jangling in my head, moaning down my spine. "Doctor?" I mumble, surprised at the weakness in my voice.

"Officer Meridian, you've finally rejoined us."

"Huh? Doctor?" My throat aches as well. I feel like I've just emerged from that burning forest.

"You've had a good sleep," she says.

I try to smile. "What's good about it? I had nothing but awful dreams."

"Well, that's the fever," she shrugs. "It often happens."

"Fever?" I echo hollowly as the realization opens a yawning door in my mind. "I have a fever?" I struggle to sit up. "No. How long have I slept? What about work? What about Ethan? What..."

"Everything's fine," she interrupts firmly, pushing me back onto the bed again. "You've slept about a shift and a half."

"A shift and..." The futility of parroting back the words hits me and I clam up, scrambling out of bed faster than she can stop me. I've been out too long. How could I have let myself get sick? Especially with Ethan counting on me and with this lab's secret finally within my reach. There's too much I have to do, but then the world is swirling again and I stumble, still trying to move, to get out of that room.

"Officer Meridian! You shouldn't be..." The doctor's voice seems far away; I can't feel her touching my arm. I can see it, but my arm seems far away somehow, and then the heat overwhelms me. I feel my body fall and my mind slips into dreaming again.

* * *

This time I am younger. I have seen only five autumns now, but there are no seasons down here in the tunnels of Chozodia. I've napped in Old Bird's arms, but here outside this strange underground building carved with strange pictures I don't understand, he's set me down. "Wake up, little one," he says. "We must enter." His gentle, scaly talons grip my hand, and I squeeze tight as we pass through the gate.

The floors are made of soft, malleable sandstone, and the walls seem to go up forever. My eyes flutter over the icon in the center, a strange green symbol that glows faintly with its own light. I feel like someone is watching me from behind it, and I want to creep forward to see if I can peer through. I shake off Old Bird's grip and take one cautious step.

"This is the shrine of our elders, Hatchling," he says. "It is a place I dearly loathe and I pray in vain the day will never come when I must bring you here once again."

I want to ask him what loathe means, why he doesn't want us to come back, but then in comes a gaunt bird whose name is a squawk my mouth can't say, but sounds vaguely like Baithen. "Old Bird," he says impatiently, as though the name itself is a demand.

"Do not ask me, Baithen," Old Bird replies wearily. "I will not comply. I will lose all that I am if I do."

"You will deny what we have all seen? All the wisdom we have gained?" I remember someone else asking a similar question. I didn't understand it then, and I don't now. I find a large, angular stone lying in the dust and begin to etch lines in the corner of the sandstone wall.

"Ah, Baithen, I dare not do so." There's me, little Samus, and the sun is shining. It's a happy picture.

"Then why? You will delay until it is too late!" There's a hand, and it's holding mine. Then I know I have to make a big, big circle for Old Bird's head. Bigger than the sun, even.

"If you had taken the child in, you too would know." He's talking about me and I have to listen a little. "These beings, Baithen... they live confined by time. It's sad, truly it is, that they have no Sight." He sounds so sad as he speaks. "But that limitation gives them the capacity for a far more profound gift. They can hope."

Baithen makes a coughing noise. "Perhaps living with this orphan of theirs has tainted your Sight, then," he argues. "Have you forgotten the teaching that hope without blindness is futility?"

"You ask me if I forget teachings?" Old Bird's feathers ruffle. "Perhaps your Sight is tainted, then, Baithen, if you forget who gave you that knowledge!" He turns to me. "Come now, child," he says, reaching for my hand. "This place grows heavy on my soul."

We leave, but I smile. He'll like this place a whole lot better next time we come. After all, I've left a little present there for him. I know he'll be surprised.

* * *

My illness persisted for four shifts. I slept most of the working hours, sleep often belabored by dreams of the past, and lay awake, restless and feverish, while the station slept. My only contact with the world was in those short hours just after I woke up, when the doctor would check me over and occasionally Ethan would stop by. The fourth shift, when my fever had broken but I was still disoriented and weak, Parr came by as well.

"Knock, knock," he said jovially, poking his head in.

He didn't need to knock. The door automatically alerted me to his presence and I'd let him in. I reminded him as much, adding that it was doubly silly to say "knock, knock" instead of actually knocking.

"Just trying to respect your space," he shrugged, and I scowled at him. "How are you feeling?"

"I don't know." I shifted nervously. "My sleep schedule is all disrupted. Even though I suppose I feel better, it's going to take time to get me back to work. I'll have to adjust."

Parr had found a chair and was perched on it backwards, his arms folded across the back. "Well, that's sort of what I wanted to talk to you about," he said, grinning. "You know, your protégé is really something."

I felt like I'd been hit in the side of the head by a ripper. Where did that come from? "How's that?" I mustered, doubly confused. First of all, why was Ethan the subject of conversation, and second, how on earth was he getting praise from Parr?

"You're surprised," Parr read. "But seriously. The other day, we had one of our chemists panicked he'd let loose a dangerous substance in a crowded lab. He hit the alarms and Ethan came running. He calmed everyone down, got them out, and enlisted volunteers to sterilize the room. He even oversaw screenings of all the exposed staff later."

I took in the story skeptically, scowling at Parr. "He's good, Ran," he said to me. "But he needs a little trust from you."

My skepticism turned to shock. What right did Parr have to criticize my relationship with my cadet? I wonder if Ethan had been confiding in Parr, and I felt a twinge of jealousy that it took me a moment to understand. Ethan had been declaring his admiration for me (in my other identity) so long, I'd forgotten that he didn't know the connection. There was no reason he necessarily admired Ran the way he admired Samus.

In fact, he might even have been frustrated with me. When he came to visit me the other shift, I'd filled his ears with patronizing platitudes. "Is everything okay?" I'd asked. "Do you have any problems?" I realized then that it was a strength of Ethan's that he'd sat there and quietly taken all my condescending comments. He hadn't needed to hear them, but he knew I'd needed to say them. I felt weaker than I'd felt when the fever was at its peak.

As Ethan had gotten up to leave, I'd warned him, "Don't blow the place up." It was a joke, of course, but one that was based in truth - I did doubt his ability. No wonder he'd become frustrated enough to complain to a friend. Parr was talking about him earning my trust, but it was also true that I certainly hadn't earned his.

My cheeks must have been red, because Parr suddenly said, "Are you feeling all right?" It was then that I realized he'd leaned in toward me to examine my face, and the smell and sight of the dog hair made me turn away in sudden revulsion. Give this man an inch ...

I straightened up, becoming all business. "What are you suggesting, then?"

"Let him continue doing what he's doing, that's all," Parr shrugged. "Let him take responsibility for waking hours. And you can work the sleeping shift."

I blinked. Did I hear right? Dared I believe my luck?

I had been so intent on filling my assumed role as Ethan's supervisor that I'd felt I needed to be on duty when he was. (I had possibly been a little protective of him, too.) On a closed station with cameras everywhere, night supervision was helpful but not essential - so I hadn't even given it a thought.

But then I had discovered that my suspicions about BSL2 were accurate. Parr had given me a glimpse, and I had stumbled upon another clue. The fifty floors floating in space held a secret, one that I was determined to uncover - but now I was trapped by my secret identity. I had to find time and space to investigate, but I didn't have any idea how.

And now Parr was willing to deliver that sweet secret into my willing, waiting hands.

* * *

Another day and I was well enough to walk, so I surprised Ethan by dropping by to give him the news of my new schedule. As I approached the door and the sensors let Ethan know of my presence, I heard a sudden clutter from within the room. He'd probably tripped over his own feet again.

When I walked in, I found Ethan standing with a sheepish grin, his hands behind his back. Behind him, a large easel was raggedly draped with a cloth, and I noticed several thick boards lined up behind it. The room smelled peculiar. "What are you doing in here?" I asked, amused. He looked around furtively and finally sighed.

He spoke in a whisper, as though he were confessing to a grave crime. "I was just, well, doodling a bit."

"Doodling?" I echoed.

"Yeah." He shuffled his feet. "It's a sort of hobby."

So that vague chemical smell was paint, I realized. To think Ethan had an artistic streak! I lunged for the easel, despite his cries of protest. "Let me see." The cloth fell from the canvas and I stopped short.

Ethan's painting was a landscape - a rich, verdant valley beneath the heat of a nearby star. The rocky bluffs stretched out into natural archways, bright tan sandstone laced with climbing vines. There was vegetation I'd never seen and a strange, standing shelf of water on a plateau. Digging into the earth at the base of the pool were several creatures with large flaps of skin hanging off their backs like empty balloons. In the sky, a leathery bird banked in the starlight, the light from its slick silver wings striking a band of small beetles, who appeared to be cooking in the harsh glow. There was not a formation, animal, or vegetable in the whole scene that I recognized, and I wondered where in the world Ethan had come from, that he knew so much detail about so many odd species.

"Is this your home?" I asked. He shook his head. "Where is this place?"

"It isn't really anywhere," Ethan said, still sounding like he was apologizing. "There are times I just think to myself about how big the universe is. And I wonder - could this sort of place exist?"

I stared at him incredulously. "But... these animals. Where did you see them?"

He tapped his forehead. I blinked.

"Take this one." Ethan pointed to the burrowing creatures near the plateau. "If you have a hot climate like this, you're going to have animals that live underground. But with the water being so high, burrowers aren't going to be able to get to it from underground much. So I figured that burrowing creatures must be equipped to carry lots of water. They'd come out at night and fill up these sacs, then consume it underground as the day goes on."

Something in my head still couldn't understand what he was implying. "You mean ... you made these animals UP?"

He nodded.

My mind reeled. I'd been listening to Ethan's idealistic speeches and smirking at his ardent adoration of my alter ego so long, he'd become a caricature to me. A kid with no persona beyond optimism and a manic streak. Suddenly the images of his record, which I'd only glanced over in the past, came flooding into my brain. Top marks. Glowing recommendations. He'd concentrated in investigation at the Academy. To be a Federation investigator, it takes more than intelligence -- it takes imagination. You have to be able to make those leaps of intuition that lead you to the heart of a mystery. And for the first time, I could see that Ethan had that resourcefulness, combined with a keen knowledge of science and logic. As he walked me through each of the creatures portrayed in his painting, I suddenly found myself feeling like the cadet in the presence of an astute trainer. And my thoughts flashed to Adam again.

He'd had the same intuition, but a world-weary attitude that had made his presence seem like enveloping night. But Ethan was like daybreak, and I suddenly realized what a powerful ally optimism was. It was a way of life I'd abandoned so long that it no longer held any meaning for me - something, I realized, as foreign as the ideas of "night" and "day" were to a bounty hunter who lived in space and measured the flow of time in shifts and cycles. Grimacing, I bit back the bitter taste of my childhood.

After a while I remembered myself again and told him about the schedule change. His eyes widened and he grinned ear to ear, the overenthusiastic green cadet showing his face again. I couldn't help it -- I gave him a few lectures on responsibility, all the while nonchalantly thumbing through the canvases he had stacked on the floor. When I left, it was with a restored sense of superiority. This had more than a little to do with the fact that I'd caught a glimpse of a very different drawing in that stack. In this picture, a beautiful blonde woman, surrounded by a glowing aura, was flying through space triumphantly. Behind her blazed the wreckage of a space station bearing the letters BSL.

* * *

Time passes. The sleeping hours approach for my first watch. The anticipation tingles within me as I watch the rows of lights across the atrium balconies blink out one by one. The research stations darken, and scientists bid sleepy farewells to each other as they retreat to their own holes of this giant warren. I do the same, wishing my colleagues a good rest as we walk back from the meal, but when I return to my room I move not toward my bed but toward my storage space. Far, far back among the shadows, there is a small box. I take hold of it.

Five minutes later, I am myself again.

It is a quick visit to the control room, staying in the shadows and watching through my thermal visor for any signs of life, and the cameras are offline for the night. I once tiptoed my way through a space pirate mother ship unarmed. (I tripped the sensors a few unlucky times, but that's another story.) I'm certainly not going to get caught in a science lab with security I control.

And now the elevator safeties lift, and I feel the familiar lurch of gravity as the platform starts to plummet. I feel everything more when I'm in the power suit. I'm more sensitive to heat, cold, wind, pain. You'd think just the opposite, and it IS just the opposite in a standard suit of armor. But this suit lives somehow. It becomes a powerful, finely tuned second skin.

I've theorized for some time that the Chozo were alchemists after a fashion. The suit has the ability to convert biomatter into various usable objects. From what I've experienced, the program or knowledge of how to do that is what I found, piece by piece, in the tunnels of Zebes. I didn't find a missile launcher; my suit didn't change. But all of a sudden, missiles began appearing in place of defeated enemies. It can't be a coincidence.

That strange sorcery is what makes this suit so remarkable. I'm sure it's the same art that allows me to morph. The only thing I worry about is how quickly that knowledge seems to be hijacked. Like the knowledge of the Chozo, it's elusive, difficult to recover and easily lost in confusion.

Well, that's not the only thing I worry about. I'm also concerned with how the suit was made. If my theory is right, it'd validate the alchemy idea. But it also makes me desperately wish I'm wrong.

I wander through the catacombs and reach the first security door. Parr had to open this for me when I was there before. This time, he's not here with his ID card. But I don't need an ID card.

Am I ever going to enjoy this!

A explosion later, the last sparks still dying, I lower my arm and step through the opened door. There is something so satisfying about forcing a door open like that. And among other things, once the electricity field loses its power, there's no sign of forced entry. Higher-security doors don't have that luxury, I note as I reach the second-level door. But I am hopeful that no one will notice I've disabled the secondary lock equipment with a few well-placed missiles. It's not like there's enough light here to even see what's connected and what's not.

For a moment, I think I've stepped out into the lower levels of the atrium. It's dark and damp here. The phosphorescent glows of saturnines are the only real light. The atmosphere hangs heavy with moisture, and it's slightly hotter than the outer halls. I feel slightly sick. I've never liked this climate. All manner of nasty creatures tend to live in places like this.

I switch to scan mode. My visor is picking up some oddities in the atmosphere. Some toxins, a little electricity, some particles it's having trouble placing. What is this place? The monster's lair? But it's not picking up any life signs larger than the saturnines and swamp grass. I take a cautious step forward, trying to peer into the dimness.

Then, there is pain.

And I am being pulled ...

* * *

I am being pulled, but I'm trying to look back. Old Bird has me firmly by the hand. He won't look at me, won't answer the questions spilling from my lips. "What were they all looking at? Why weren't they running away like everyone else? Where are we going? Do you have to hold my hand so tight?" I have a million questions, but they're all really just one question: what's going on?

But if I ask that question, the answer will not be good.

We hurry down tunnels crafted with ancient symbols and stand before the temple again. I see it and grin. "Let's go in, Old Bird! I have a surprise for you there!" He'll be surprised when he sees the drawing I did all those years ago, and it will make him chuckle. And then we'll forget all about the burning forest and the insects and just be ourselves again, happy as ever. Maybe if we forget long enough it'll all go away.

And for a moment I think it's actually going to happen. He leads me into the temple and we walk right up to the spot in the stone where I etched stick figures of the two of us on a sunny day. He gazes at it for a moment, but shows no surprise, as though he's known of it all along. Then he turns to face me and kneels. We are eye to eye.

"My little one," he says, a sad smile lighting his eyes, "this is a beautiful gift you gave me. I want to give you a gift in return. But before I do, I want you to promise me something."

"Okay." I nod, smiling, hoping to give him some confidence. He always looks so sad.

"Whenever you think of me," he said solemnly, "always remember me just like this picture. You and me walking together in the sun. Always remember how happy we were in this picture."

"Huh?" The clouds are starting to form over my little illusion. I feel my hands trembling.

He doesn't explain. "Now it's time for me to give you something. Come over here." But even as he speaks, his hands are on my shoulders and guiding me. I stumble across the stones to the center of the room, where that strange icon lies. It glows brighter than I remember, and the light seems to strengthen as I approach it. I reach out and touch it. It's warm under my palm.

"My Hatchling," Old Bird whispers behind me.

Then the icon is not solid at all; it's flowing around my hand and drawing me in. Liquid fills every pore, fills my mouth and nose, as I fall into this strange sphere. How I can still breathe I don't know, because every inch of me is being invaded, saturated with this odd stuff. My vision is getting cloudy with it. I see Old Bird's great domed head as he turns away from me, and I call out to him to rescue me. Or at least I think I do, because sound fades away and the liquid fills my throat. And it's warm and moving, like a hand feeling me, examining me, trying to memorize me. I try to reach out for my guardian.

The first I see is a flash of red, and Old Bird's head flying back. The drops land on the surface of the sphere and slowly start to make their way in, merging and flowing like raindrops running down a stone. Then I can see that his neck is bent unnaturally, that I can see his beak although his back is to me, and all that redness is coming from him, from a place on his neck where a long bolt of black metal protrudes on either side. I realize it's blood, and it's surrounding me, closing in on me. I scream and scream.

But something else is going on now, something so strange I can't describe it. Where those spatters of blood have reached me, they've disappeared, and I can feel warmth just under my skin. Crimson eclipses my vision. The blood is everywhere, and it's seeping into me. And yet somehow I feel comforted. Like Old Bird is embracing me.

The warmth is almost unbearable now. Tears fill my eyes as I gaze over at his crumpled body, lying just beyond my reach. And I realize the gift he's given me. Old Bird is gone, but he's running through my veins now -- he's part of me. I am truly a Chozo. His Hatchling, just as he said. I fold my arms over my chest, crying. It feels like I'm embracing him. His name tumbles from my lips.

But just as I feel at peace, the changes begin again. Something is happening near my feet. I look up frantically and see Old Bird's body decaying, dissolving, too fast to be natural. It's like something invisible is eating him. I reach out, trying to stop whatever it is, but suddenly my arms are not my own - they're encased in gleaming metal, and I feel the rumble of a machine near my finger. There's a long hollow cylinder protruding from my right hand. A firearm. And there's metal surrounding me on all sides now, a slick, glittering second skin. It feels soft, not like metal at all.

I look around in wonder, and an image appears in the glowing liquid of the sphere. I can see myself for the first time and I don't look human. In fact, with these great hulking shoulders, I look more like a Chozo than anything. If only I had a beak - my head seems too small and too fragile to be atop this monstrous body. And then a V-shaped haze of green surrounds my field of vision, and my breathing becomes hollow. I can see myself still. I have become a Chozo warrior.

The rest is a blur of violence and anger, and when I next think I am forcing open the door to an alien ship on the edge of a battlefield, my strange form stained in insect blood, fire erupting from trees around me. My visor is blinking and beeping at me that I've lost combat systems, that my suit was damaged and that it can only barely protect me. I don't care. At my feet are countless bodies, and trailing from the hand I can still use to grasp things is Old Bird's robe. It is all that's left of him. And I am all that's left of the Chozo of Zebes. I close my eyes in grief as I speed away.

* * *

The chamber is still dim. But I have the distinct feeling eyes are on me. Has someone seen me and followed me down here? I whip around, but nothing. No new life signs on the radar. I let out a heavy sigh that echoes around me in the hollow helmet. What just happened? It was as if I'd traveled back in time. Not like a dream -- although I've been dreaming of that time recently, those dreams mercifully stop short just before that moment. But this was sharp and poignant and real. I had become my younger self for a moment. All my experiences, my years of battle had slipped away. Just now, I was eleven and I killed for the first time.

Then a life sign registers, orange and distinct on my radar. I am afraid to turn around. I'm not sure if I'm really here. Am I still dreaming? And if so, do I really want to face another ghost?

But the stubborn voice of my experience tells me that I might as well look. Running has never gotten you anywhere before, Samus. In the end, you've always had to face your demons. Over and over. What's one more time?

So I turn. It's hard to see anything in the dimness, but as I peer carefully at the shadowy figure I see the round dome of a head, hulking shoulders, a thick body, trailing robes. A Chozo ghost? It isn't the first time I've encountered them, but why here? Why does he look so solid, when the other Chozo ghosts were nearly impossible to see?

Then I can see the face more clearly. I stifle a sob. It's Old Bird.

Those worn, sad eyes gaze at me gravely. I back away a step, then walk toward him slowly. I can't help myself. I need to see this apparition. "Old Bird?" I hear myself stammer. I sound like a little girl again. "Old Bird, it's me. Samus. Your Hatchling. Do you know me?"

The ghost nods.

The tears start to flow now. "Why... did you come back?" I hear myself ask. "Is there something you wanted to tell me? Is it true, what I've suspected all along? Is this suit... you ..." I cut myself off, but the questions are bubbling over now. "Have I done the right thing, Old Bird? All these years. Have I avenged you?" He looks pityingly at me, but backs away when I reach out for him. I can barely see him now through the tears. "Please! Say something... anything... it's me, your daughter!"

He closes his eyes a moment. And he opens his beak as though he's about to speak, but no words come.

"Old Bird?" I whisper, fearful.

And then he is gone. The life sign blinks out.

And I am all alone in the darkness.

_to be continued_

note: I am posting this now to spur myself to complete Chapter 5... because Chapter 6 is going to be downright explosive. Thanks for your comments in advance!


	4. Chapter 4: Doppelganger

Aftermath  
A Metroid fan fiction by Jennifer Wand

* * *

Because Samus deserves a personality and a purpose.

* * *

Ch. 4: Doppelganger 

I didn't go back there for a long time. I worked my sleeping shifts and I slept through working hours, just as I was supposed to, seeing other faces only for a few hours before sleeping time. And a good thing, too. I couldn't face the world as I was. Not after what I'd seen. I still couldn't make any sense of the vision. Had I been transported back in time? Was I unconscious? In a dream? I didn't know, and I wasn't terribly anxious to find out.

So I pounded the beat for a while, and what I discovered was startling. BSL2 didn't shut down during the sleeping hours. Pockets of it were very much alive. Through my monitors, I witnessed secret meetings, gambling, after-hours fights, illicit love affairs. It amazed me how three-dimensional these drab, dull scientists could actually be. For the first time, I felt slightly jealous of Ethan, that he did his work among them.

I'd never known love, not in the sense that I was seeing. I'd felt affection, of course -- for my parents, Old Bird, even Baby in a strange way. The closest I'd ever been to romantic love, I supposed, would have been my feelings for Adam. But that was too complex, too polluted by our positions, our ages, and the mess that ensued. If there had been a seed of something there, it had been crushed underfoot before it had the chance to grow. In a way, too, Adam was the first person I'd really gotten to know since I lost the Chozo and shut up the walls to my heart. I was still looking for another father. And just like every father I'd ever had, Adam left me.

What was it about me that people felt they had to sacrifice their lives for?

Not just people. Baby had died for me. Even my enemy had once given up its life to give me the power to defeat a common enemy. But that was a different story. The SA-X had no emotions. It was not afraid to die. It wanted only to defeat its most feared predator. I guess it thought I would save the lives of its fellow X.

Still, if young Samus had perished in that pirate raid, how many more lives might have been saved?

"Ran. Ran!"

I blinked. I'd been lost in thought so long that I hadn't noticed Parr's approach. Again. How could he sneak up on me so effectively? Was I so dependent on the suit's radar system that my instincts had left me?

"Where were you?" Parr asked benignly, handing me a tray of food. I had missed the shift's meal.

"I'm sorry, Parr. In space somewhere." I took his offered tray and surveyed the contents. "They've outdone themselves again, I see."

"Hey, food is food." He shrugged. "So wherever you were in space, it sure wasn't here. Anything you want to share?"

"Not particularly." I'd grown used to Parr's invasive questions now. It had become a staple of our relationship -- he'd pry, I'd rebuff him, he'd get to the point. I had half a feeling he preferred it that way. In the meantime, I'd become a little more comfortable with him. Enough so, even, to be a regular mealtime partner, despite the sidelong looks from his co-workers. I didn't particularly care what they thought, but what was it about humans that made them so interested in whether others were mating? I felt a swell of disdainful pride in having been raised by birds.

Parr actually had a rather interesting story to tell. His very existence was improbable. How could a Hojarr man-dog beat the odds and become the head of a government-sponsored lab? From his easygoing conversations, I was able to piece together bits of history and figure out where he'd come from.

The Hojarr were, by all accounts, unsuited for higher educational pursuits. Prejudices against them still lingered from the old days, when humanoids and hairless creatures were thought superior to those with fur. But the race also had the biological deck stacked against them: they were burly, not agile, and their fine motor skills left a great deal to be desired. In addition, though they were an intelligent species, their moral code was so simplistic and so removed from the highly complex morality of other humanoids that they were thought of as dullards. When a Hojarr filled out an application to university, he didn't write the essay he thought the admissions counselor wanted to read. Instead, he'd answer the question directly, even if that limited the answer to a few clumsily scrawled sentences. Spin was a foreign concept to the Hojarr. They were relentless in their adherence to the truth.

Parr was the runt of his clan. Thin and pale, with very little hair at birth, he was coddled by his mother and told endlessly by his father that he'd never amount to much. This wasn't cruelty; it was the brutality of utter honesty. There was very little evidence of someone like Parr actually "making it" in Hojarr society, and it wasn't in his father's moral spectrum to lie.

Perhaps it was due to this upbringing, perhaps to happy coincidence, but Parr quickly developed an ability for subterfuge that was nearly unheard of in his kind. The way he told it, he'd discovered that he could leave his house without being noticed, and learned that not saying anything was an easy way to avoid telling the truth.

"I found all sorts of shortcuts," he said once through a mouthful of roll. "If my mother asked me to promise her, I'd simply mutter 'don't' under my breath between 'I' and 'promise.' If she couldn't hear me, that was her failing. Then it occurred to me that if I just said 'I promise,' I wasn't telling her just what I was promising to do. By the time I was a teenager, I'd learned to lie outright."

"So a pathological liar runs this place. Charming."

"Where did you go when you were sneaking out all those times?" wondered Ethan.

Parr smiled wistfully. "To school. I wasn't supposed to go. Cost too much and I wasn't going to amount to anything, so why waste the currency on me when my brothers and sisters had much more promise? So I used to sit outside the window and listen to the lectures. That's where I got my taste for science."

I had to appreciate his resourcefulness. Like me, Parr had grown up different. He'd learned to make do, play the hand he'd been dealt. That was something I was used to as well. From that point I was able to accept him as a friend, although the fact he could sneak up on me still unnerved me. At least now I knew where it came from.

Meanwhile, Ethan, who had so recently surprised me with his maturity, had suddenly been stricken with a new wave of Samus-worship. He'd started regaling poor Parr with highly exaggerated tales of my exploits.

"And then, she touched the space pirate with her fingertip, and her suit transmitted a virus to it. And the virus spread, and all the space pirates in the base dropped dead," he said with the solemnity of a judge. "I swear!" he added. "I read about it." Remind me to look up THAT book.

The more exaggerated his stories became, the more popular Ethan got. He soon found that the public loves a good war story, and before I knew it he was the center of attention. That was fine with me. To the world, I was dead, so what did it matter what people said about me? I'd never cared about that even when I was alive.

No. What bothered me is that with all his newfound popularity, Ethan still felt compelled to tell those stories to ME. He always made sure I was within earshot, and sometimes I worried he was onto me. But the more likely scenario was that he had a complex about authoritative women. If it was female and in a uniform, he was obsessed with it. And like it or not, I'd fueled that obsession by being so protective. Sometimes, he was just a little boy looking for approval. I didn't want to think too hard about the psychological origins of all that, so I just nodded and smiled.

The only real snag happened when he suddenly announced to a captive cafeteria audience, "And Chief Ran has met her! She knows all about Samus. She's even worked with her."

Despite myself, I felt my cheeks get red at the sudden stares. "Ethan, come have a look at this energy flow chart," I ordered, as though we were alone and not the center of a throng of gleeful scientists.

"She won't say anything to me, though." Ethan feigned a whisper. "Security classifications and all that. But I know she knows her."

"Ethan. The chart."

"Yeah. Samus Aran saved her life once. That's why she gets so grouchy. It hurts her pride." The crowd laughed.

The iciness in my voice startled even me. "Chart, Ethan!"

"She told me Samus never takes off the suit, even when..."

"CHART!"

Nobody dared laugh after that. I grabbed Ethan and stalked off.

Still, it felt strangely good to focus my energies on the living for a while. I'd spent so much time thinking about my past recently. About my childhood, about my time in the Academy and the places I'd been since then. I suppose it was unavoidable, since I was living in a place that was quite literally the sequel to my last mission. So many things in my life seemed to come in twos. From two fathers lost to two battles on my homeworld; the two monstrous guardians of Tourian and the duality of Aether; and the dark versions of myself I faced there and on BSL. I thought perhaps I had been standing in front of a giant mirror all my life. They say your greatest enemy is always your opposite identity.

At the very least, that meant I'd been right all this time. If they had been on the side of dark, that meant I was light. If they were killers, then I was the savior. I didn't drink Phazon or destroy space laboratories. (Well, when I did, they were usually abandoned but for space pirates and smaller creatures.) I was making the right choices. I was good and they were evil, which is most likely why the SA-X's last action still bothers me so much. Had I done something wrong, that this creature had to make it right?

* * *

Adam had come looking for me. I was just barely a new recruit, having seen only fifteen cycles and spent the last four of them in isolation in a rooming colony. There wasn't anywhere else for a teenager in a stolen space pirate vessel to go, especially one who hadn't been among humans since she was three. It's an embarrassing story, but the long and the short of it was that they very nearly killed me before storming the ship and discovering that there were no space pirates inside. 

It didn't take me long to discover that the Federation was on the same mission of revenge I was on. I learned my history and discovered that the space pirates had spattered the stars with the blood of innocents for hundreds of cycles, wiping out entire species just as they had the Chozo. Somehow, knowing that they were so indiscriminate made me angrier. If they had hated or been at war with the Chozo, at least there would have been some emotion behind those massive eyes of theirs. But no, they felt nothing. They were parasites, and I wanted to exterminate them.

The moment I came of age, I applied for the Federation Academy. Acquaintances (for I really had no friends) supplied me with books to study for the entrance exam, and I discovered an aptitude for soaking up data, one that is even greater when I am in my suit. When I wear it, I find I can systematically retrieve information almost instantaneously, even in the midst of battle. Sometimes I think it is the nature of the blood inside me. The Chozo held knowledge on a deeper level than humans. I couldn't reach their esoteric heights of awareness, but at the very least, even without the suit, I am a frighteningly quick study.

Between the written and physical exams, the Federation was quite literally falling all over itself to admit me. (I overheard a tester singing my praises so enthusiastically that she didn't see a cord on the ground and fell on her face.) When I think back on it, though, I handled everything so badly. It never occurred to me that learning how to behave around people would be as important as being able to shoot a pistol or recall the letter of the law. So I was the object of fascination for a few shifts, until my fellow students realized I had no interest in befriending them. After that, students and teachers alike pretty much left me alone, which suited me fine.

It was just after I'd performed my first practical exam in arrest protocol that Adam cornered me. I was walking down the hall toward my room, certain I'd been satisfactory. Taking exams was like getting up in the morning. I just did it -- no sense of pressure or anxiety, no worrying. Just something I had to do in order to be part of the Federation that was taking on my enemy. In fact, I had very few emotions at all in those days.

As I turned a corner, my path was blocked by a shadow, and I looked up into a weathered face. The man before me was older - he had seen at least forty cycles - and surprisingly lean, though at first he seemed much larger. His eyes were dark, and he was frowning.

"Samus Aran," he said.

"Yes?"

"You will not make it past your first cycle at this rate."

It was the first time anyone wearing the uniform of an instructor had given me criticism. Something twinged inside me. "What?"

"I observed your exam. You are not going to make it here."

For the first time in a long time, I felt real anger. "I certainly will. I've had nothing but high marks and you aren't my instructor, so you have no power over me. I'll thank you to get out of my way, sir."

This brought a smile to his face. My disdain turned to confusion. "That's more like it," he grinned. Small lines folded around the outside corners of his eyes when he smiled. "You aren't a kid, are you? You're a real high-born lady. Proud as a peahen. That's good."

Frustration was starting to simmer beneath the surface now. No one had challenged me in too long. "Who are you?"

"Major Adam Malkovich, protocols and procedures division, tenured instructor," he rattled off as though he'd done it a thousand times. "And you're Samus Aran, but other than that, nobody knows a thing about you. Except for me. I now know that you're a lady bird, and you don't like when your feathers are ruffled."

I was unnerved by his reference to birds. "So?"

"So, I consider myself very lucky to have that knowledge, lady. That's all." And he walked, whistling, down the corridor. I turned, stared, watched him go.

From that day Adam began a systematic process of teasing me. Daydreaming in the library, I'd feel a tap on my shoulder and whirl to see his back, one arm raised and waving at me nonchalantly as he continued his conversation with someone else. Other times, I'd feel him coming and turn to stop him, only to have him walk right by as if he didn't know me. Only now do I realize that he was steadily thawing me out, forcing me to have a relationship with at least one other human being. And he was beginning to teach me the subtleties of human contact: how a mute glance or a stare affected people; which stances were friendly and which were hostile. He was tapping into an unconscious reserve of human memory that I had locked away, and he was doing it effectively. My irritation with him grew into fascination, and I began to find it gratifying when he acknowledged my existence, or when he greeted me with a gruff "Morning, lady."

My second cycle at the Academy, I finally had Adam as a teacher. The class was criminal psychology, which surprised me, since I thought he'd mentioned his specialty was procedures and tactics. After the first class, he called for me to come to his office. When I arrived, his first words were, "I arranged for you to be in my class."

"I figured as much," I smirked.

He laughed a long laugh. "Then you're doing better than I thought!" He motioned for me to take a seat. "Look, lady, I'm going to let you in on a secret. What you're going to learn in that class isn't just how criminals think. It's how we all think. You need to make your mind as potent a weapon as your body is, if you want to win this battle of yours."

Adam never asked me what that battle was, but he taught me the basics of psychological warfare throughout that class. How to use people, how to keep them at arm's length, how to sense their needs and desires as keenly as he had sensed mine that first day. He taught me that there were monsters in angels' robes, and angels with monsters' faces. He taught me that there were many different kinds of good and evil, but that there was only one truth, and what to do with that truth would be up to me. And that's why I've never been afraid.

So why was I acting so frightened now?

The thought was sudden and startlingly current, flying into the reminiscence I'd allowed myself during these slow-moving work hours. It was true, though. If Adam knew I was avoiding the very mystery I'd set out to explore, he'd give me a disapproving look, shake his head, and walk away. There had been very few things in my life that could actually put me into the doldrums, and Adam's disapproval had been one of them. Even in death, he still had a remarkable hold on me.

I sighed resolutely. It was time to go back there.

* * *

This time, I used my x-ray visor. If there was some sort of conventional portal or time slip device down here, it'd show up on the high-frequency sensors. Somehow I doubted that theory, but it was still the most plausible. How else could I have returned to that temple on Zebes in that time of war? Perhaps it was an unstable portal. That would explain the "ghost" I saw, but not the reality of the experience. I had really been eleven again. Perhaps a hallucinogenic gas of some sort? It would have to be potent to get through my suit's filters, though. In any case, a different approach might yield some answers. 

The spongy earth, or artificial turf designed to resemble it, felt damp and pliable beneath my boots. It made me shudder, and I wished the suit didn't have such powerful sensors. Sure, I was protected, but the soles of my feet still felt like water was trickling beneath them. Nothing was showing in my visor yet.

Without warning, along the edge of my visor flickered the ghost of something small, its form shielded by the nearby mushroom's massive presence. I attempted to track it, but it was gone. I heard a sound -- a series of clicking noises, quick, like chattering teeth. Then there was silence again. Was it my imagination? I turned, trying to stay alert, listening for more.

Then there was the pain again, like the bite of a needle, but I felt it not in one specific place, but throughout my skin. My head throbbed for a moment.

* * *

And I am pushing, not pulling, this time. Pushing through the wreckage of the burnt flight deck. The metal grating is torn up, a thicket of steel shrubs eager to catch me. But I can't afford to get caught. My ship should be just ahead, and I have only a few minutes to get to it. If I don't, I'll be eating fire and drinking death along with the parasites on this station. 

I come to the airlock and look around in amazement. My ship is gone! The airlock is open and only the outer portal keeps me from being sucked away into space. It almost looks as if someone had just taken off. But my ship couldn't have moved on its own. Had the X invaded it, as well? I start to run in another direction, hoping to see its location from a nearby portal, when a crash thunders behind me.

A creature as ugly as this could never be found in nature. This is mankind's doing. The Omega Metroid stands a full twelve feet tall and grimaces at me through eyes red with rage and hunger. For a moment I think it must have eaten my ship, it's so huge. It sickens me to think that this is the ultimate result of our scientific knowledge. A gargantuan slobbering monster. And to think I'LL be the criminal for shutting this place down.

I scan it, note its belly as a weak spot, try to get underneath it. But it's got me first, and the slash it tears across my suit is painful... enough that I'm knocked to my knees long enough for it to tear at me again. I'm immobilized, helpless as the creature attacks, hearing only the deafening blares of my suit's warning systems as everything flashes red and I know I am only a whisper away from death.

Then, above me, there is a blue glow, and the creature, which had been advancing, steps back. It's that same solitary mass of energy that had remained when the SA-X had dissolved away. And now it has changed, and it is in the SA-X's shape -- MY shape! -- again. I groan. So this is how it will end for me. Unable to move as I am defeated by my archenemy -- and myself.

But the SA-X has its back to me. It's charging the Omega, firing bolts of ice into its belly. The Omega writhes and raises a claw to slash at its new threat. I hear myself call, "Look out!" But it's too late -- the already-weakened SA-X is losing its form. Just before it evaporates into a cloud of blue, it looks around at me. For the first time, I think I see eyes behind that cold mask. And the eyes are pleading.

The blue mist dissolves into my suit and makes me shudder. I feel my blood shifting, adapting. It's the old magic of the Chozo again, the kind that can change my very cells to protect me from cold, heat, or acid. This time, I know, the Metroid vaccine remaining in my system is weakening, dissipating. The ice beam is online again, and it's no longer dangerous. The SA-X has returned me to myself.

Why?

My mind whirls around the question. But there will be time to think later. I struggle to my feet and take aim, firing a round into the creature's belly. The SA-X wanted me to defeat it. I saw that desire in its eyes...

In her eyes.

Suddenly, reality shifts around me. The deck and the Omega are all melting. Panicked, I fire again, trying to freeze the coming time change ...

* * *

I could still feel the cold tingle of the ice beam against the tips of my fingers. Icicles were hanging from the long, scalloped rims of the saturnines, now. Had I fired a round that came through time with me? Or had I been here the whole time, hallucinating, fighting invisible enemies? I sighed. This was more and more perplexing. 

I hear cracking ice and peer into the darkness tentatively. Maybe I had frozen whatever they were keeping down here. If so, it was likely to break free soon -- this was my only chance to get a look. I ran forward into the shivering reeds, my beam charged and ready. A few steps and I saw clearly that something WAS there, frozen. The size and shape of a human. It was trying to break free. I aimed and approached cautiously.

An arm came free. An armored arm. I watched it carefully. Then another arm swung loose. This one had a cannon on it.

The SA-X stepped free from its icy prison. Horrified, I released my beam. The SA-X ducked into a morph ball, avoiding the icy blast, and stood again. But it didn't approach to attack me. Instead, it stood still, looking at me intensely. The silhouettes of eyes seemed to be those same pleading eyes I remember.

I know the real SA-X died. This wasn't it -- not the original. It had been frozen, which means it wasn't a hologram or a mirage. It had a body of some sort. I recalled Adam -- the computer -- telling me there might be as many as ten clones of the SA-X on BSL. Was this one of them? Had it been saved, somehow, from the station's fate?

If so, perhaps it could understand me. Perhaps it could answer me.

"Why?"

The word echoed in the still room. The sudden sound of my voice made the delicate icicles tremble. The SA-X's gaze was unwavering.

"Why did you do it?" Suddenly it was a rush, an explosion of confusion and self-loathing. "Why would you give your life for me? Did you hate the Metroids so much? Didn't you hate me? Didn't you want to kill me? You could have. Why didn't you?" I could feel my hands shaking. What was it about this spooky place that made my emotions swell to overflowing? Why did it insist on showing me these people, these creatures I thought I'd never see again? It was cruel. "Tell me!" I hear myself demand, my voice high, nearly shrieking. The desperate voice of a girl, not a woman, not a hunter, not a warrior.

The creature looked down, then back up, silently. Of course. What was I thinking? Old Bird couldn't speak when he appeared to me. I was asking questions of a ghost that couldn't answer. I sighed, at a loss.

So it was startling when the voice came. It was raspy, devoid of gender, but it was certainly coming from within that gleaming helmet. "We ..."

"We wanted to be you."

My hand flew to my face. I could feel my heart hammering.

"Remember that," the SA-X said in a flat, even tone. "We want to be you."

I took a step forward, but as I did, the SA-X's appearance turned transparent, then flickered and died into the dimness. I quickly switched back to x-ray vision. Again, I thought for a moment I saw something flick across my peripheral vision, but it disappeared before I could turn to track it. I was left alone and confused once more.

The confusion remained as I returned to my room toward the end of my working hours. I felt a vague sense that I was lost in some sort of surreal dream. But it had spoken this time, it'd moved, it'd had form. And that made it different. That made it real.

These were no ghosts I was seeing. Something was down there. A nasty secret lurked in the depths of BSL2, one that was dangerous in ways I didn't even understand yet. And no matter what I had to do, I had to figure it out. No more running scared. This time I wasn't going to stay away.

-To be continued-


	5. Chapter 5: Revelation

Aftermath Because Samus deserves a personality and a purpose By Jennifer Wand

* * *

Chapter 5: Revelation

* * *

I didn't sleep during my sleeping hours. I sat in my room, thinking, planning. If I was to go back there, I would need all my wits about me. I couldn't simply plunge into that room again and disappear into another flashback -- they wouldn't help me make sense of the mystery. I needed a plan, a way to smoke this anomaly out of hiding and make it reveal itself for what it was.

What I really needed, I realized, was a partner. Someone I could watch from a monitor, or someone who could watch me to tell me what a camera said. But I couldn't trust anyone with this task. Not Ethan, who would never be able to stay quiet; not Parr, who was the keeper of the keys to this secret. I didn't know anyone well enough. I resolved to set up a video feed from my visor, hoping it would be an agreeable compromise. To get it, though, I needed a recording device that would link to it remotely. There were sentrycam systems throughout the station -- I'd just have to find one and rework it.

I'd nearly forgotten how loud the station was during the working shift. Everywhere I turned there were people -- trying to tame unruly animals, pushing test-tube-laden carts down the hallways, loudly arguing with colleagues over this hypothesis or that. It looked to be nearly impossible to find a camera that no one would miss. I ended up trolling the storage rooms for spare parts.

In one of them, I ran into Parr. He was, interestingly enough, rummaging through a bin of discarded camera equipment. After a quick greeting, I plunged my arms into that same bin and came up with the end of a cable that looked promising. Pulling it hand over hand, I eventually felt it snag on something. The wire went taut. I tried to dislodge it with a powerful jerk, and heard a "Whoa!" from the other side of the box. I looked up. Parr had crashed into the box face first, bent over from the waist, his hands wrapped around the other end of the same cord. We looked at each other and chuckled. "Remind me never to play tug of war with you," he said, rubbing his bruised nose. "Be my guest." He let go of the cord, and I wrapped it under my arm.

"You're so selfless," I said with mock formality.

"Of course I am," he smirked back. "I'm a scientist."

I burst out laughing. "Scientists are selfless? Would that be when they're begging for grant money or when they spend their days locked up in labs while their interns break their backs?" He knew what I was talking about. There was a whole cadre of young, green interns on the station that spent entirely too much time fetching snacks and sorting files for entirely too little money.

"Hey!" He looked hurt. "Do you see an intern fetching cables for me?"

"Point taken."

"So what are you hunting?"

The question caught me off guard. "What?"

"Now that you have the dreaded cable snake under control, that is." He gestured at the coil of wire under my arm. "Anything else I can help you find?"

I relaxed. So that's what he was going on about. "You really are selfless, for a scientist," I praised.

"Science IS selflessness," he insisted, leaning against the shelves casually. "That's my philosophy."

"Your philosophy, huh?"

"I'm not a hero, you know," Parr said. "I can't save people's lives like you can. I can't make an impact on the world in my life. It's too big and I'm just one man. But the whole point of science is to advance knowledge a little at a time. So someday people will be able to benefit from it."

"I don't know," I said. "Those sound to me like the words of a man who hasn't figured out the reason he's alive."

Parr's eyebrows went up. Then, he grinned and stood up straight, taking a half-step toward me. "Are you implying that you're that reason?"

Oh, for heaven's sake!

I pulled out the cord and drew it taut between my fists, holding out my arms to create a barrier between us. "When are you going to stop hitting on me, Parr?"

He leaned his shoulders into the cord defiantly. "When you admit you're attracted to me."

"I'm not attracted to you!" I insisted as he leaned closer, grinning into my face. "You're a DOG, for crying out loud!" The minute I heard those words fall from my lips, I knew I'd committed a faux pas. Dropping the wire on the floor, I stepped away quickly and averted my eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm tired. I should be sleeping ..." There were no more excuses. My voice trailed off.

Parr was silent. I glanced back at him and saw that he was looking more than a little concerned. "Is that the problem?" he said gravely. "That I'm a dog? Most people around here say I'm more human than they are, you know." He gave a halfhearted laugh. "I guess you really are more than I could hope for. Sorry." He knelt to pick up the wire.

I felt a flood of sympathy and quickly knelt across from him, grabbing the other side of the wire, forcing him to look at me. This was a really, really good guy. If I thought for a moment I could have a man in my life -- if there was time enough for me to learn to overcome my prejudices ...

But that wasn't possible. "Look," I said gently, "I don't talk about my past much to anybody. But there's a part of me from way back that won't accept you, and I can't change that. Not now. Besides, there's someone else."

Those words caught me by surprise as much as they did him. His eyes became round and shocked. "There WAS someone," I correct myself. "It was years ago. I was young -- too young for him -- and nothing ever happened. I shouldn't even be thinking about him anymore. But I do." There was no denying how raw the pain still was. That the fates could have brought him back to me and taken him away again made it sting all the more. "So I can't."

Parr handed me the wire and straightened up, walking toward the door. I followed him with sad eyes. Halfway there, he turned back and said softly, "Then maybe it's you who hasn't found a reason to be alive."

* * *

I returned to my room with the equipment, but instead of putting it together, I curled up into the tightest ball I could. I felt like crying. I felt fragile.

My reason to live?

I thought it had been revenge.

Then I thought it had been to eliminate the Metroids. Neither task seemed achievable. They always seemed to come back to me. New horrors, old threats in new guises. I could not be free of them. Like awful phoenixes rising up from the ashes, again and again, beating charred black wings.

And somehow, so did I. What reason did I have to stay alive? What right had I to survive as not one, but two families had been wiped out? I should have been killed along with them. The odds of me surviving were astronomical.

Is that why I plunged into danger again and again? Because I was testing my odds? Because I knew someday my luck would run out and I could be at peace with the unfairness of my survival?

Was I trying to hurry that day along?

Damn it. No. Adam wouldn't have wanted that. Old Bird wouldn't have. My parents wouldn't have. Almost every other creature I'd ever met, though, wanted me dead. I'd seen BSL scientists and Federation troopers attack me. Granted, they had been possessed at the time, but there is something horrific about seeing a human being, an intelligent lifeform, staring at me with death glowing in his eyes.

Sometimes I cursed Adam for bringing me out of my shell the way he did. It made me care what others thought of me. Sometimes I was sure I chose the solitary life I led just to get away from the all-too-human pain of rejection. Better to battle faceless enemies than to see the hate in their eyes first-hand.

But it was always there, right in front of me. Whenever I hacked a space pirate research terminal, I saw my own name again and again among the log entries. These creatures were heartless, but they were intelligent enough to fear and hate. And they feared and hated me. They called me the Hunter, the cursed Hunter, the feared Hunter. But they also knew my name, and that was my own fault: I'm the one who told them.

There was nothing quite like hearing the hiss of "Samus" slip out from the mandibles of those cruel insects. "Hunter" I could live with, but when they spoke my name it felt like they were calling to my child self, like they remembered me from all those years ago when they stormed my homeworld and left me crying in the shambles of what was once a great port city. But Ridley had simply stared at me blankly when I came into that giant birdcage where he waited.

"A Chozo?" he'd squawked in disbelief, mistaking my suit for the form of those who gave it to me. "There is still a Chozo here? Who are you, hunter?"

"Samus Aran of the Chozo of Zebes. The race you destroyed!" I'd cried. I'd felt like my rage would explode if I weren't able to face him. I tore off the helmet and my hair, still long in those days, spilled out around my shoulders and into my face. My eyes were blazing so furiously I was surprised the heat didn't scorch him.

His big, birdlike eyes--eyes that were a twisted mirror of Old Bird's--widened. For a moment I thought he really had recognized the girl he'd orphaned all those years ago. But then he stammered, "Not even a Chozo--a human!" He beat his purple wings, rising up off his perch into the open chamber. "You will pay for what you have done to Kraid. I will show you the wrath of the space pirates! Supreme Commander Ridley will destroy you!" He took in a deep breath, but instead of continuing his bombastic sermon, he belched dark spurts of flame.

I dodged, tumbling across the room. The wind from the flapping of his wings stung my cheeks with cold. Already he was approaching, the sharp anchor of his tail colliding again and again with the ground, making dents in the dingy metal. I morphed, navigating between the strikes, but then the fire was upon me again and my senses reeled. Stumbling to my feet, I ran from the burning of his breath. Panicked, I'd let down my guard, and that was when the tail finally hit home.

The pain sensors in my suit went ballistic. Everything flashed around me, and I cried out. It felt like I would shatter to pieces. But it was the sound of my own voice that awoke me. It was the voice of a girl, not of a warrior, and I realized I was still vulnerable. I couldn't track his movements, couldn't scan for weak points. Scrambling wildly despite the pain, I made my way to where my helmet had fallen, forgotten, onto the floor.

It took about a hundred missiles to do the job, but finally I saw tremblings wracking the creature's body, as though a million small explosions were happening inside him. His claws fell limply; his tail was stiff with pain. He rasped at me as he crumpled to the ground. "You think you've destroyed me, but you have not. Our science is far above yours. We've taken the technology of the Chozo and put it to great new use! As I speak, my scientists are reassembling Kraid. And they will do the same to me. And we will live to hunt you, Samus Aran..." He coughed, a stream of bubbling lava issuing from his great bony beak. "The space pirates will remember your name, hunter..."

And he was gone. But the space pirates did remember my name.

* * *

"Chief?"

I was too lost in a ball of unwelcome rememberances to register the sound, much less respond. But it broke my concentration, and as the minutes wore on I became vaguely aware of my young cadet entering the room. My head was still down, but I didn't need to look up to know just how much of a fool he was making of himself. "Oh my god, Chief!" he keened at my lack of response, dashing about the room to find something that would reanimate me. "What can I do for you? Do you feel unwell? Do you need something to eat or drink? Are you feverish?"

I cast a glance upward at that. He had assembled a meal, a drink, and a thermometer, and was brandishing them all at the same time. His expression was of utter concentration -- as though he were juggling knives. What else could I do? I laughed.

He sighed in utter relief, nearly losing his grip on the array. "Chief..."

"What brings you by?" I asked as he went about putting everything back where it belonged. I tried to sound as casual as possible, to displace in his mind the image of me curled up in a ball, sulking. That wasn't very CO-like.

The question seemed to throw him for a loop, which seemed strange to me. But then again, Ethan was a strange one through and through. "I thought you might be--" he paused-- "tired, or something, and I thought maybe there was something I could do for you," he answered hurriedly.

"That's nice of you," I said slowly.

"I'm a nice guy," he rejoined. And he was a nice guy, so nice that his awkward gesture had warmed my heart more than I'd wanted to let it. I felt again the little pinch of need that tempted me to open up, to trust someone with the weight of the secrets I carried. I could at least use his help with the video recording. He didn't need to know everything. But this was a kid who'd followed his dreams to this job. I couldn't risk his disillusionment if he realized just how corrupt the Federation was. He might lash out at me for destroying his dreams. That would be dangerous to the work I'd done so far. At least, that was the practical consideration. But I was also afraid of that twinge in my heart, the vulnerability I'd developed. As much as I hated to admit it, it'd hurt me too much to hurt him that badly.

"Say, Chief," he went on, "do you mind if I ask you something?"

"Yes." The moment his face fell, I regretted the glib retort. I had been up for far too long now, and old habits tend to resurface with lack of sleep. "I'm sorry. What is it?"

"Are you lonely?"

It was an interesting question, and not what I had expected. Then again, I wasn't entirely sure WHAT I had expected. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I never really see you talking to many other people."

It had barely occurred to me that might be considered unusual. I tried to shrug it off. "I am used to working alone."

Unexpectedly, Ethan pouted, an expression that made him look about ten years younger. "Does that mean you think of me as baggage?" he asked plaintively.

"Is..." I could have sworn I saw tears well up in his eyes. "Is THAT why you took the sleeping shift?" I slammed my head back down onto my knees. Of all the ridiculous...!

Ethan smiled. "But that's cool, I mean, that's one thing I admire about you, you know. Even if you are such a loner," he added derisively.

The room was still and silent for a few moments. Then...

"You have a complex."

The words fell from both our mouths in unison, and we pointed at each other like stupid gawking mirrors. I sputtered. "What are you talking about? I do not have a complex!"

"You do!" he insisted. "You have a complex about men. Well, people, but men mostly. Look at you, so aloof. Did you have some horrible trauma or something? Deadbeat father? Fly-by-night boyfriend?"

"Nosy and annoying cadet?" I mocked his gleeful tone.

"Exactly." Not the response I'd expected. If anything, he looked even more proud. "And who did you get friendly with but the only guy on this station more nosy and annoying than me!"

"HE got friendly with ME!" I felt my cheeks flame despite myself. "What about you? Don't try to tell me you're not obsessed with authoritative women!"

"Of course I am," Ethan grinned simply. "But at least I don't deny it." Whether the words were meant teasingly or not I wasn't sure, but his tone was grave, and I started feeling self-conscious. "As for you, Chief, I just get this feeling you're desperately trying to put on a false face. And it's a shame,because I get the feeling your real face would be even cooler…"

I leaned forward. His words, abstract as they were, got a little too close to the literal truth. "What are you asking me, Ethan?"

He seemed to shrink back. "Just... if I can be of some help to you, that's all." He stood up abruptly. "I'm sorry, Chief, I didn't mean to pry. Hey, take care, okay?"

I don't think I've ever seen someone walk backwards as quickly as he did then. By the time I had figured out he was trying to retreat, he was already gone. With men so frustrating in my life, I wanted to take his advice and start talking to women instead.

* * *

I hadn't slept. I felt terrible, parched, like I'd been in a desert for cycles on end. But I'd sworn I wouldn't waste any more time, so when the time came, I got to work.

It was a simple matter to wire the camera feed from my visor display to the transmitter. Now, whatever my visor saw, a little machine in a dark corner of the next room would record. Testing it out, I discovered an unexpected bonus: I could replay the video in the visor itself. The organic technology of the Chozo never ceased to amaze me.

The room was colder this time. Just by a few degrees, but it was enough to make me shiver slightly. And it still seemed to be deserted. I took a long, slow look around, then played it back in slow motion, searching for anything I'd missed the first time. But not a single motion registered.

I switched back to live view, took some sideways steps, staying against the wall. I was expecting that pain and that sickening jump into the past again, but it never came. Not for minutes upon minutes. I suppressed a heavy sigh -- if the creature was sleeping, there was no reason to wake it. If it was a creature at all.

I switched to x-ray scanning. It hadn't worked before, but still, perhaps it was an erratic wormhole of sorts that winked in and out of existence, bringing creatures from different places and times here and transporting me elsewhere at odd intervals, then going dormant again. Again, I turned in a wide circle, sweeping the room. Nothing. I played it back. Still nothing.

Thermal scan next. As I'd thought, the room had been brought down in temperature slightly. The color of the vegetation's signatures was slightly muted. The scientists had been playing with this environment. Good for them. I hoped they'd inadvertently frozen the creature to death.

One more sweep, one more slow spin. Nothing again. I replayed it in slow motion, and this time I noticed something I hadn't. It was a blip just on the edge of my peripheral vision, something my brain had filtered out but the camera had seen. At one-tenth the speed, it was much easier to see. Then, as the seconds ticked by in my slow-motion video, I saw something that nearly made me yelp aloud.

As I had turned away, the little blip had grown in size. Grown wasn't the right word -- it had erupted in size. By the time it had slipped off the edge of the camera's field of vision, it was a vague red haze that encompassed the whole height of the screen. Whatever it was, it had known I would turn away, and when I did, it had come careening toward me at top speed.

Panicking, I switched back to live view.

Ridley was standing in front of me.

As before, I screamed and fired. The one sound drowned out the other; my ears rang with the buzzing of high-pitched sound against the raw boom that sent my armor vibrating. It was always that way with Ridley. My battle instincts kicked in and I had to fight myself just to think. Some visceral part of me reacted to the sight of him. I wanted to bombard him with fire -- to shut him up before he hissed at me in that hateful rasp of a voice that I was doomed, that I was hated, that I could never be free of him and his twisted ambitions.

The missiles boomed over and over against his tough hide. I knew that I could never break the skin, but that a constant batter would bruise his internal organs enough to rupture them. Ridley didn't bleed, but his skin would go crimson and then the hemorrhages would begin. I just had to keep safe long enough and batter him hard enough.

Ridley rose high in the air, but his ascent was hampered by the height of the chamber. It seemed odd to me, but I kept the pressure on. He swooped, dodged when he could, flew dangerously close to me, cold disdain in the black eyes as they passed. Something was wrong with this scenario, but what? I couldn't afford to stop firing long enough to think about it.

He took a huge swoop forward, trying to grab me in his talons. "SAMUS!" came the angry rasp. I morphed and rolled behind him, the distorted sound of my name ringing in my ears, and straightened up to fire a battery of missiles at him. His wings came up like leathery shields and he hissed a distorted laugh. The sick, lizard-like mouth with its crocodile teeth slit into a smile.

"Finally."

More missiles. Anything to stop that awful voice from that awful mouth. My horror was slowing me, I could feel it. I could still evade his swipes and grabs, but just barely. In my mind I was the three-cycle child again, covering my eyes at the onset of the storm. Praying the explosions around me would just shut up and go away. Just shut up and disappear. But I was not a child. I was a grown woman, and I had learned that nothing happens just by wishing it. And I had the equipment to act. So I let a super missile fly.

He reeled, but sooner than I could imagine he was facing me again, beady eyes probing mine, the long fanged mouth turned up in a sadistic grin. "At last," he said, "The big showdown we've both been waiting for."

I started. How could he know that in my secret heart of hearts I dreamed for the final day when no permutation of him, stoked by science or hate, would ever be able to return once that final die had been cast? He couldn't know how much I yearned for the proof that this creature that perverted my childhood and my adopted race would finally, after so long, be dead.

"And I will finish what I should have done so long ago," Ridley went on. "What I should have done in Zebes. What I should have done on Tallon. What I should have done on that infernal ship where my remains rotted away..."

BSL? But that hadn't been Ridley. That had been an X parasite, swollen with the bird shape it had taken. Unless the mad science that had reconstructed Ridley so many times had been able to reassemble him from the remains of the creature I blasted away and had somehow absorbed its memories...

"No. What I should have done before all that!" the monster ranted with a squawk of furor. "I will complete the annhilation of your wretched colony as I intended to do when you were still too tiny to put a thorn in my side."

What?

"Yes, that's what I should have done."

The colony?

"Before those cursed Chozo gave you their secrets."

He had stopped his mad swoops through the air, and, I realized later, I had frozen too. What he was saying was a hypnotic rhythm for him and a shocking realization for me, one that was slow in coming. But I could feel it rocketing to the forefront of my consciousness as he came toward the peak of his sermon.

"I should have exterminated you along with the rest of those wretched colonists, and left your broken body next to those of your parents!"

He spit fire with that final exhalation of breath, but by now I was ready. I ducked, rolled, rose to one knee. My eyes and my muscles were cold steel. And when I spoke, my voice was iron.

"You're not Ridley."

And I bathed him in a stream of ice.

The great ball of frost and snowflakes grew so thick that it turned opaque and clung to the ceiling like a massive cocoon. I didn't let the beam fade out until the entire back wall was coated in ice. I wanted to shock this thing into revealing itself. I now understood what this creature had done. There was no time warp into the distant past, no strange hallucinogen in the area. There was just the beastly presence of a creature that could read my mind and shape my perceptions into flesh. A monster.

The ice began to crack. I took a step back and activated the scan mode on my visor. Flakes of ice crashed to the floor like heavy, uneven clumps of snow off a tree that has been shaken. The chill in the air was palpable.

The monster emerged. This time it was not in the shape of Ridley. It was smaller, much smaller... and round. My scanner was working madly, coming close to analysing it and then mismatching. But my eyes were wide. I did not need a computer to tell me that a Metroid was floating there, wafting slowly down from the ceiling.

I readied my beam to fire again. As much as I wanted to know what had created this shapeshifter, I was prepared to destroy it if it came too close. It was still shocked with the cold, however, and floated aimlessly, disoriented.

Still, since when could a Metroid change shape?

And then, the scanner hit paydirt and I knew the answer. This time, the ice was in my bones. I felt a wave of faintness splash over me. And somewhere in the deepest pit of my stomach, a slow, slow engine began to rumble to life. Ice turned to fire. A moment ago I couldn't move, but all of a sudden I couldn't stand still. Someone was going to pay for this.

I dashed from the room, leaving the creature behind. At the edge of my vision, my scanner still blinked its frightening finding.

The thing was shaped like a Metroid, inside and out, but its cellular makeup was that of an X parasite.

* * *

To be continued.


	6. Chapter 6: Confrontation

Aftermath

Because Samus deserves a personality and a purpose

By Jennifer Wand

* * *

**Chapter 6: Confrontation**

"How could you do such a thing?"

Parr was sitting at his desk with a mug of coffee, browsing the news. He looked fairly groggy. It was still the first hour of the waking shift, and the station was deserted. Nobody had passed me in the hallways on the way here; nobody had stopped, gawked, pointed fingers and whispered. Not that I had been able to see anything but my destination. The doorway appeared to me as though it were framed in red, so blurred with rage was my vision.

He set down his coffee and grinned. "Ran," he said in a pleased voice. Then he cocked his head. "What the hell are you wearing?"

At my waist, my fingers tensed around the rim of my helmet. I'd torn it off as I'd run. It wasn't the first time in my life I'd felt my rage was going to boil the metal if I didn't remove it. "Do you have any idea what you've done? Do you have any idea what you've created?"

He stood up. "What's wrong?"

"Why didn't you just irradiate them with Phazon while you were at it? You must have a death wish!" Parr didn't have a clue and I didn't care. The anger that drove me was like acid eating at my insides and I was clawing it out, word by sharp-edged word. "The sheer arrogance! How could you possibly think you could control them? The two most dangerous parasites known to man and you had to combine them? You're sick."

Parr's face turned white, and he stuttered for a moment before finding his words again. "Ran... y-you... where have you been looking..."

He knew the answer to that question already. "Explain it," I seethed. "What in this world were you thinking?"

He sighed. "Look, Ran," he said. "We do research here. It's a research station. This was an intriguing problem, so we took it on. As far as our job goes, we did it successfully. We did our job."

"For who?" I slammed my helmet down onto the desk. Parr jumped. "Who ordered this... this madness?"

"Don't ask that question, Ran, please."

"You're creating monsters!"

"We're creating possibilities!" For the first time since I had burst in, Parr's voice was raised. "God, Ran. Don't you even know what a triumph this is? Think of the possibilities! We've taken two creatures that can extract and replicate information. The Metroids don't just suck up life force, you know. They feed on brainwave activity. Information. Knowledge. Memory. But they can't process it.

"And the X can replicate anything they touch. But when they do, they create shells, empty vessels with no knowledge, just an instinct for self-preservation. Can you even begin to imagine what we've achieved? These two abilities together..."

"...could destroy a universe! Just how much are you willing to risk for the sake of your science?"

His jaw set. "Everything. I'd risk anything for science. Don't you know that by now? It's not about my life or death. It's about possibilities."

The resolve in his voice made me feel, for the first time, like I was losing my footing. This was such a bizarre thought to me, who had always felt that my duty was to prevent danger from becoming disaster. Perhaps it was that I had grown up alongside beings who lived outside of time. My mortality felt like my one tragic flaw. Perhaps if I could keep others from dying, this short, limited life of mine would have some meaning.

I supposed that made me similar to Parr. We were both willing to risk ourselves for some (real or imagined) greater good. I tried to calm down. "But what would make you want to pursue this bizarre... this dangerous experiment? What in the world could you possibly gain from this?"

"What couldn't we gain?" He threw up his hands. "We could create virtual clones of our leaders, our great thinkers. We could create creatures with human knowledge and the physical abilities humans have never had. Imagine a bird that could tell us how it flies. Imagine a soldier with the skills of a space pirate and the memories of a Federation officer. Imagine--"

Parr clapped his hand to his mouth and muttered a muffled swear. My rage roared back to life in a heartbeat. "Don't bother," I snapped. "I knew it was the Federation from the moment I saw it. The greedy bastards want to mass-produce everything, even soldiers--" It was my turn to break off. "Did you just say space pirate?"

He said nothing. His face was ashen. The straggling dog hairs around his chin were damp with sweat.

"That space pirate you'd captured. Parr." At the sound of his name, he nodded sheepishly. "...The bastards!" I whirled and puched a wall. A picture frame fell from the opposite wall and hit the floor with a loud clatter. Coffee spilled over the edge of Parr's cup.

"Ran. Get a hold of yourself." Par tried to grab my arms. I pushed him aside, and he stumbled, crashing against his desk and sending dark streams of coffee streaming across its surface. He straightened up, now flushed. "Ran!" This time, he locked his hand around my wrist, his grip hard enough to crush it. The pain sensors in my suit flared and I howled. Parr let go of my wrist, his face pale at the thought he'd hurt me.

"In case you've forgotten," he said in a low voice, "you're one of 'those bastards,' too." He paused, gazing at me as though he'd just seen something. There was a silence. Finally, he said, "Aren't you?"

I stretched out both arms, knocked him over, turned, and bolted. The pretending was over.

As I leapt through the doorway and rounded the corner, I saw Parr's figure in a reflective wall panel. He'd gotten to his feet in a hurry and was now talking earnestly into a communicator, his face red with rage and worry.

He'd be talking to his donors now. There was nothing more I could do here as Ran Meridian--that much I knew. My cover was blown and I'd lost Parr's trust. That was all right, though. I'd already discovered what they were up to. Now it was only a matter of getting out of here, getting back to my ship, and coming up with a strategy. So I ran. Harder and harder until the speed booster slowed down time around me and turned the gleaming walls into blurs of silver light.

The wide, inviting panorama of space was within my sight now and getting closer by the second. Parr would have revoked my clearance by now-- I wouldn't be able to authorize the launch of a shuttle. And for the first time I remembered a blinking red signal that had been in my peripheral vision when I had first seen the true nature of the Metroid-X amalgamation. I hadn't been concerned with it then, but now it was a massive problem: My missiles were depleted. What chance did I have of blasting my way out of here now? As I arrived in the shuttle bay my thoughts were glum. Lost in outrage and shock, I'd bungled this whole operation.

"Need a lift?"

The pleasant voice startled me, and I reflexively aimed my beam. But it was no monster or Federation authority, but Ethan, standing in the doorway of a nearby shuttle, grinning and rocking his thumb back over his shoulder like a hitchhiker. "Hop in," he smiled.

When fortune smiles, you don't ask how or why. All that mattered was that Ethan's security code was still active and he had cleared the shuttle for takeoff. I did as I was told.

As I moved back toward the cabin, Ethan tossed out casually, "I knew you couldn't wear it ALL the time."

* * *

It was a little later, and we were cruising comfortably toward the asteroid where my ship was moored. I was sitting on the bridge in shock, my throat dry, my head bowed. Ethan stood at the control deck, following the navigation panel.

Finally, I managed to speak, though my voice was surprisingly raspy. "H... how long have you known?"

"Almost from the beginning," he shrugged, his back to me. "Well, that's not quite true. I suspected from the beginning. I mean, if you felt you needed to destroy the first BSL, I thought it was natural you'd feel the need to investigate Two. So I get myself assigned, and my CO is a mysterious woman I've never heard of? I couldn't help but secretly hope it was true."

"And so all those stories you would tell--"

"Testing you." He turned back with a wink. "You kept your cool pretty well, Chief, I have to say. So it's not as if your cover was blown. It was actually an accident that I found out for sure."

"What kind of acci--" My dry throat caught up with me, and I choked on the last syllable. Ethan immediately made for the water bubbler in the adjoining room.

"I went to the security station," he shouted through the doorway, "to ask you a question. After my shift. Well, you weren't there, and one of the monitors was on the blink too. I figured you'd gone to get it fixed, but it stayed offline and I got curious. So I traced the line to its root and got the bright idea to set up my own camera." He came back through the doorway and crouched across from me, passing me a cup of water.

"And then you saw what I was up to," I said after gulping it down.

Ethan nodded, casting a glance at the small, gleaming ball beside me. I'd shed the suit after I boarded, opting for more casual clothes. At the time, I'd really wanted to curl up, ashamed of having my identity on display. But a morph ball doesn't speak, and I couldn't let all this go unexplained. And you can't curl up in a suit with such massive shoulders (useful as they might be in adverse climates). So for a while, the suit and I sat side-by-side, like two pill bugs that had been poked with sticks.

"Thank you for not ..."

He finished my thought. "Blowing your secret?"

I smirked at him. "I was GOING to say 'asking for my autograph.'"

"Oh, please." He laughed. "Did you really think my admiration of you was so juvenile? You're the reason I joined the GF. To find you. I didn't expect I'd meet you so soon though. I feel a little like I won the lottery.

"But really, Samus ..." He paused, blushing, as he called me by my true name for the first time. "All I wanted to do was work with you. And that wasn't going to happen if I started going ballistic the moment I figured out who you were."

"I suppose I can understand that," I said with a weak smile. And I found myself grateful that he was there. After the monstrous nature of what I'd seen, a little human contact was a welcome respite. And there was nothing like an ego boost to make one forget about failure.

* * *

Ethan was a little disappointed to see that my ship was nothing more than a standard hunter-class gunship with barely enough room to move inside. But he liked the orange color, saying it fit my personality. I had no clue what he was talking about.

Immediately I went into the computer bay and started to input what I'd learned of BSL2 and the Metroid-Xs -- Met-Xs, I'd started calling them in my head -- hoping I could puzzle out some of the intricacies and find a way to destroy them without endangering the other lives on board BSL II. My onboard computer contained the wealth of information I'd gained in my travels among the stars, and there was a lot in there that came from planets and cultures lost forever to the rest of the world. Perhaps in that infinity of lore, there was a solution.

When I was finally convinced I had input everything I could remember, I set the machine to process the query and returned to the bridge. "We should go back," Ethan said nervously. (He looked more claustrophobic than anything else.) "I don't like the idea of just making off with their shuttle. We're supposed to be on the side of the law."

"'Supposed to be' and 'are' are two very different things," I lectured. "But don't worry, we are going back. You can even take the shuttle." His shoulders relaxed. "In fact, I'll need you to open the ports for me."

"What'll you do?" he asked, hovering anxiously near the tight portal that connected my ship to the loading dock of the larger shuttle.

"I don't know yet," I admitted. "But I'll figure it out by the time I get there." In the background, I could hear the busy hum of the processors. It was a sound that filled me with comfort and confidence. There was a universe of answers in that machine -- I just had to find the right one.

"That's not what I mean," Ethan frowned. "Are you going to kill them? The monsters you told me about, that is. Or are you going to capture one? What's your plan?"

They had to be killed. That was the only way to ensure the safety of the scientists onboard BSL2. But what of the Federation? Would I be able to expose them, put a stop to their dangerous ambitions? Perhaps if I had managed to get Parr on my side after all that...

It was frustrating. "I'll figure it out," I snapped. "Go back to the shuttle and head back. Wait for me to arrive. I'll tell you then." I made a shooing motion toward the loading dock.

He retreated a step. "But Chief --"

"Go, go!" I motioned impatiently. "We don't have time to waste." In my head, I was already seeing Met-X versions of Parr and the scientists, hunched over the bodies of their victims, flickering in and out of their assumed shapes as they lay in wait to devour us. It was a nightmare scenario, but one that became more likely with each passing moment.

Ethan shrugged and began to move back toward the shuttle. But a noise from the computer bay stopped him. We both turned, stared at the door.

There was a figure back there, something tall and lean. Shrouded in shadow as it was, its movements seemed to speak to me of something familiar. Not daring to guess what had made its way aboard my ship in my absence, I nevertheless trembled, my heart in the grip of warm and cold flushes of apprehension.

Ethan reached for his pistol. Reflexively, my hand stretched back to stop him. At the same time, I wished I had never shed my power suit. It seemed I couldn't leave one den of dangers without creating another.

And then the figure had a voice. "Don't go back yet," it said.

My blood froze.

"Ethan," I whispered, "go back to the shuttle."

"What?"

It was too much of an effort to even answer him. I couldn't move, but every cell in my body felt like it was racing at the speed of light. I was sure my bones would crack from the vibration. Something huge and wet seemed to be rising up through my sinuses like an awful cloud of fog.

"Chief..."

His presence was choking me further. "Head back. Now." I couldn't turn my head to stare him down; it took all my effort to even move my jaw. But I heard the portal open, heard his boots clang on the planks of the loading dock and fade as the portal whirred closed.

And I was alone with ...

"Don't go back yet," repeated the figure in the shadow. It started to move forward."

I saw, rather than felt, my hands extend, saw my fingers spread into wild, shaking shields. "Don't--" I hissed. "Don't come out. Don't."

"Before you go anywhere, you and I need to have a talk."

"Stop --"

But it didn't stop. My eyes were blurred by this time, but I still knew the face that moved into the light.

"What do you say, lady?"

* * *

To be continued...

* * *


End file.
